Construction of categorical bundles from local data (Q2808150)

A categorical group is a small category \(\mathbf G\) together with a functor \(\mathbf G\times\mathbf G\to\mathbf G\) such that the object and morphism sets are groups. The authors call such \(\mathbf G\) a categorical Lie group if its object and morphism sets are Lie groups and the source and target maps, sending morphisms to objects of \(\mathbf G\), are smooth mappings.NEWLINENEWLINEA categorical principal bundle with structure categorical group \(\mathbf G\) is a functor \(\pi:\mathbf P\to\mathbf B\) which is surjective on objects and on morphisms, and a functor \(\mathbf P\times\mathbf G\to\mathbf P\) which is a free right action on objects and on morphisms, and such that \(\pi(pg)=\pi(p)\) for all objects or morphisms \(p\) and \(g\) of \(\mathbf P\) and \(\mathbf G\) respectively. The morphisms of \(\mathbf B\) arise from paths on the set of objects of the ``base'' category \(\mathbf B\). (\(\mathbf P\) is the ``bundle'' category in this context.)NEWLINENEWLINEThe authors work with subcategories \(\mathbf U_i\) of \(\mathbf B\) for which the paths start and finish in specified sets of the given open coverings \(\{U_i\}\) of a manifold \(B\). Hence they construct gerbal and functorial cocyles, and establish various properties thereof. This enables them to construct a global categorical principal bundle \(\mathbf X\to\mathbf G\) over \(\mathbf B\) by gluing together the trivial categorical bundles \(\mathbf U_i\times\overline{\mathbf G}_\tau\), where \(\overline{\mathbf G}_\tau\) is a subcategory of a certain ``quotient'' category \(\overline{\mathbf G}\).