Braided premonoidal Mac Lane coherence (Q1878453)

The author studies premonoidal categories; that is, categories \(\mathcal{C}\) with a functor \(\otimes : \mathcal{C} \times \mathcal{C} \rightarrow \mathcal{C}\) and a natural associativity isomorphism \(a_{A,B,C} : (A \otimes B) \otimes C \cong A \otimes (B \otimes C)\) called the recoupling for associativity. The Stasheff-Mac Lane pentagon is not required to commute, leading the author to study the automorphism \(q_{A,B,C,D}\) of \((A \otimes B) \otimes (C \otimes D)\), obtained from the pentagon's five sides, called the recoupling deformativity. He uses the term pseudomonoidal when two dodecahedra involving rebracketings of 5-fold tensor products are required to commute. Coherence for these structures, and richer ones involving units and commutativities, is studied in terms of combinatorial objects called coupling trees.