Categorical tori (Q1743724)

A \textit{categorical group}, or a \textit{2-group}, is a monoidal groupoid with weakly invertible objects. A Lie groupoid such that the monoidal structure is locally smooth in an appropriate sense [\textit{J. H. Conway} and \textit{N. J. A. Sloane}, Sphere packings, lattices and groups. 3rd ed. New York, NY: Springer (1999; Zbl 0915.52003)] is called a Lie 2-group. Categorical groups play an important role in group theory since a number of prominent groups seem to be most naturally understood via their categorical refinements. Weyl groups and some of the sporadic groups, including the Monster, are known or conjectured to be the isomorphism classes of categorical groups. In this paper, the author gives explicit and elementary constructions of the categorical extensions of a torus by the circle and discusses an application to loop group extensions. Examples include maximal tori of simple and simply connected compact Lie groups and the tori associated to the Leech and Niemeyer lattices. The author obtains the extra special 2-groups as the isomorphism classes of categorical fixed points under an involution action.