A skew approach to enrichment for Gray-categories (Q6087076)

This paper moves away from classical monoidal categories, as used by \textit{S. E. Crans} [Theory Appl. Categ. 5, 12--69 (1999; Zbl 0914.18006)], to the skew monoidal categories of \textit{K. Szlachányi} [Adv. Math. 231, No. 3--4, 1694--1730 (2012; Zbl 1283.18006)]. The main goal is to establish closed skew monoidal categories as the natural setting for enrichment on the category \(\boldsymbol{G}\)-\(\boldsymbol{Cat}\)\ of Gray-categories, one capable of capturing weak higher-dimensional transformations. The synopsis of the paper goes as follows. \begin{itemize} \item[\S 2] introduces skew monoidal categories and the various flavors of multicategory. \item[\S 3] gives some background on Gray-categories. \item[\S 4] is the technical heart of the paper, constructing the 4-ary skew multicategory \(\boldsymbol{Lax}\). \item[\S 5] is able to establish the first main theorem (Theorem 5.8) claiming the existence of the skew monoidal closed structure \(\left( \boldsymbol{G} \text{-}\boldsymbol{Cat},\otimes_{l},1\right) \)\ with internal hom \(\boldsymbol{Lax}\left( \mathcal{A},\mathcal{B}\right) \). \item[\S 6] establishes the second main theorem (Theorem 6.3) claiming the existence of the skew monoidal closed structure \(\left( \boldsymbol{G} \text{-}\boldsymbol{Cat},\otimes_{p},1\right) \)\ with internal hom \(\boldsymbol{Psd}\left( \mathcal{A},\mathcal{B}\right) \) of pseudo-transformations. \item[\S 7] uses the notion of sharp multimap to refine the two aforementioned skew monoidal structures to sharp variations \(\left( \boldsymbol{G} \text{-}\boldsymbol{Cat},\otimes_{l}^{\#},1\right) \)\ and \(\left( \boldsymbol{G}\text{-}\boldsymbol{Cat},\otimes_{p}^{\#},1\right) \)\ whose associated internal homs \(\boldsymbol{Lax}\left( \mathcal{A},\mathcal{B} \right) _{s}\)\ and \(\boldsymbol{Psd}\left( \mathcal{A},\mathcal{B}\right) _{s}\)\ are the full sub-Gray-categories of \(\boldsymbol{Lax}\left( \mathcal{A},\mathcal{B}\right) \)\ and \(\boldsymbol{Psd}\left( \mathcal{A} ,\mathcal{B}\right) \)\ containing the strict Gray-functors. \end{itemize}