Descent on 2-fibrations and strongly 2-regular 2-categories (Q1771117)

For a category \({\mathcal E}\) fibred over a finitely complete category \({\mathcal B}\), each morphism \(q : c \to b\) in \({\mathcal B}\) determines a category \({\mathcal D}esc({\mathcal E},q) \) of descent data over \(q\). There is a canonical functor \(k_{q}\) to \({\mathcal D}esc({\mathcal E},q)\) from the fibre \({\mathcal E}_{b}\) of \({\mathcal E}\) over \(b\). The morphism \(q\) is said to be of effective descent for \({\mathcal E}\) when \(k_{q}\) is an equivalence of categories. All this goes back to SGA1 [\textit{A. Grothendieck}, Exposé VI: ``Catégories fibrées et descente'', Lect. Notes Math. 224 (1971; Zbl 0234.14002)]. Moreover, when \({\mathcal E}\) is opfibred (``cofibred'' in Grothendieck's terminology) over \({\mathcal B}\) and satisfies the Beck-Chevalley condition, \textit{J. Bénabou} and \textit{J. Roubaud} [C. R. Acad. Sci., Paris, Sér. A 270, 96--98 (1970; Zbl 0287.18007)] and Jon Beck noted that \({\mathcal D}esc({\mathcal E},q)\) is monadic over \({\mathcal E}_{c}\) so that \(q\) is of effective descent for \({\mathcal E}\) precisely when the inverse image functor \(q^{*}: {\mathcal E}_{b}\to {\mathcal E}_{c}\) is monadic. Using this, we can study the effective descent morphisms in a regular category \({\mathcal B}\) when \({\mathcal E}\) is the arrow category for \({\mathcal B}\) thought of as the category of internally indexed families of objects of \({\mathcal B}\). Having clarified [\textit{C. Hermida}, J. Pure Appl. Algebra 134, 83--109 (1999; Zbl 0935.18007)] the notion of \(2\)-category fibred over a \(2\)-category \(B\), the author now carefully lifts all the above steps to one higher dimension. In particular, the category of arrows of \(B\) is replaced by the category of internal fibrations.