The \(n\)-fold reduced bar construction (Q1793958)

The Segal-Thomason bar construction (the reduced bar construction) provided the initial step connecting various monoidal categories with loop spaces that, later, has been generalized in many papers by considering categories with various algebraic structures (symmetry, braiding,\(\ldots\)) and then, connecting them with \(n\)-fold, \(n=1,2,\ldots\), and infinite loop spaces. With appropriate notions of two, three and \(n\)-fold monoidal category (compared in the paper with others previously defined) the authors consider the \(n\)-fold reduced bar construction based on such an \(n\)-fold monoidal category \(\overline{W}\mathcal{M}\) and gradually they prove that, for \(n\geq 2\), this construction makes a lax functor from \((\Delta^{op})^n\), the \(n\)-th power of the opposite of the simplicial category, to Cat (this fact is named `the correctness of the reduced bar construction'). In the proofs, the authors develop a new syntactical technique whose role is to substitute the coherence results usually used to get the appropriate simplicial space. This technique relies on a syntactical nature of the simplicial category presented by its generating arrows and equations.