Galois coverings of enriched categories and an extension of Cohen-Montgomery theorem (Q2099284)

The main motivation of this paper is to give an intrinsic fundamental group and coverings for categories enriched over an abelian closed symmetric monoidal category \(({\mathcal V}, \otimes, {\mathbb I})\) which is also cocomplete. In Section 2, the author begins by defining a \({\mathcal V}\)-covering \(F : {\mathcal A} \rightarrow {\mathcal B}\) of a small \({\mathcal V}\)-category \({\mathcal B}\). To any such covering, he associates a group \(\mathrm{Aut}_{{\mathcal V}}(F)\) that acts on each fiber of \(F\). If this action of \(\mathrm{Aut}_{{\mathcal V}}(F)\) is free and transitive on each fiber, then \(F : {\mathcal A} \rightarrow {\mathcal B}\) is a Galois \({\mathcal V}\)-covering. In this section we can find a result that characterizes Galois \({\mathcal V}\)-coverings in the following way: if \(\Gamma\) is a group acting freely on a small \({\mathcal V}\)-category \({\mathcal A}\), then the quotient \({\mathcal A} \rightarrow {\mathcal A}/{\Gamma}\) is a Galois \({\mathcal V}\)-covering. Conversely, if \(F : {\mathcal A} \rightarrow {\mathcal B}\) is a Galois \({\mathcal V}\)-covering, then \({\mathcal B}\) is isomorphic to \({\mathcal A}/\mathrm{Aut}_{{\mathcal V}}(F)\) as a \({\mathcal V}\)-category. In Section 3, it is shown that a connected grading \(Z\) on \({\mathcal B}\) leads to a Galois \({\mathcal V}\)-covering \(F_Z : {\mathcal B}\sharp Z \rightarrow {\mathcal B}\) involving the smash product. Conversely, any Galois \({\mathcal V}\)-covering \(F : {\mathcal A} \rightarrow {\mathcal B}\) is isomorphic to the smash product covering corresponding to a connected grading of the base category \({\mathcal B}\). The fundamental group of a small \({\mathcal V}\)-category \({\mathcal B}\) with respect to a basepoint \(b\) is defined in Section 4 as the group of automorphisms of a fiber functor on the category of Galois \({\mathcal V}\)-coverings of \({\mathcal B}\). This group, denoted by \(\Pi_{1}^{\mathcal V}({\mathcal B},b)\), may be computed by restricting to smash product Galois \({\mathcal V}\)-coverings of \({\mathcal B}\), is independent of the choice of the basepoint \(b\) when a universal \({\mathcal V}\)-covering of \({\mathcal V}\) exists and admits a description in terms of families indexed by connected gradings of the \({\mathcal V}\)-category \({\mathcal B}\) (see Section 5). This last description is used in Section 6 to show that the intrinsic fundamental group is functorial with respect to connected and full \({\mathcal V}\)-subcategories. Finally, in Section 7, the author makes explicit calculations extending the Cohen-Montgomery duality theorem for coactions [\textit{M. Cohen} and \textit{S. Montgomery}, Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 282, 237--258 (1984; Zbl 0533.16001)] to the symmetric monoidal category \(({\mathcal V}, \otimes, {\mathbb I})\).