Centers and homotopy centers in enriched monoidal categories (Q436127)
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English | Centers and homotopy centers in enriched monoidal categories |
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Centers and homotopy centers in enriched monoidal categories (English)
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30 July 2012
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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.
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monoidal categories
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center
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Hochschild complex
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operads
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Deligne conjecture
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