Centers and homotopy centers in enriched monoidal categories (Q436127)

From MaRDI portal
scientific article
Language Label Description Also known as
English
Centers and homotopy centers in enriched monoidal categories
scientific article

    Statements

    Centers and homotopy centers in enriched monoidal categories (English)
    0 references
    0 references
    0 references
    30 July 2012
    0 references
    The Hochschild complex of an associative algebra can be understood as its derived (here ``homotopy'') center. This paper generalizes the notions of center and homotopy center to a much larger class of monoids. In this generalization, the 2-category of categories is an example of a center. The 2-category Gray of 2-categories, 2-functors and pseudonatural transformations and the 2-category of dg-categories, dg-functors and coherent natural transformations are homotopy centers. These examples are suggestive of the authors' philosophy: understanding the center as a universal method for (higher-dimensional) enrichment. Classically, enrichment is defined over any monoidal category with a braided monoidal structure. As noted by Forcey, Aguiar and Mahajan, this requirement can be weakened to what the authors call a duoidal structure. Briefly, a duoidal category \(D\) has two monoidal structures, related by a not necessarily invertible interchange law and various unit coherence relations. Here the duoidal category \(D\) is taken to be enriched over a closed symmetric monoidal category \(V\). The authors consider a \(D\)-enriched monoidal category \(K\). Interestingly the standard notion of monoid in \(K\) is not the correct one because it is blind to the enrichment. A new notion of monoid, introduced here, includes additional unitary operations, which collapse when \(D\) is braided monoidal. For such a monoid, they introduce a cosimplicial object in \(D\) which is analogous to the classical Hochschild complex. The conical limit is called the center. The totalization with respect to a more general cosimplicial object \(\delta\) in \(V\) is called the \(\delta\)-center. When \(V\) is a monoidal model category, \(D\) is a monoidal model \(V\)-category (for each of the monoidal structures) and \(K\) is a \(D\)-monoidal model category, there is a notion of a standard system of simplices for \(V\), which we take for \(\delta\). Modulo the need for fibrant replacement, the \(\delta\)-center is called the homotopy center of the monoid. Work in progress with Berger considers the homotopical aspects of this construction. There is a canonical action of a contractible 2-operad on the homotopy center of a monoid, analogous to the classical result that the center of a monoid is a commutative monoid. Making this precise necessitates the development of the theory of operads in duoidal categories. A slight modification of previous work of Forcey with this aim is given here. This expression of ``commutativity'' is related to a form of Deligne's conjecture, higher-dimensional versions of which will be the subject of future work.
    0 references
    0 references
    monoidal categories
    0 references
    center
    0 references
    Hochschild complex
    0 references
    operads
    0 references
    Deligne conjecture
    0 references
    0 references
    0 references
    0 references
    0 references
    0 references
    0 references

    Identifiers

    0 references
    0 references
    0 references
    0 references
    0 references
    0 references
    0 references
    0 references
    0 references