Decomposition spaces, incidence algebras and Möbius inversion. III: The decomposition space of Möbius intervals (Q725281)

The paper under review is the third part of a trilogy devoted to the investigation of decomposition spaces and their incidence algebras. The first part [ibid. 331, 952--1015 (2018; Zbl 1403.00023)] introduced the notion of decomposition space as a general framework for incidence algebras and Möbius inversion, discovered independently in a different guise by \textit{T. Dyckerhoff} and \textit{M. Kapranov} [``Higher Segal spaces. I'', Lect. Notes Math. 2244. Cham: Springer (2019; Zbl 1459.18001), see also \url{arXiv:1212.3563}] who were motivated by geometry, representation theory and homological algebra. The second part [ibid. 333, 1242--1292 (2018; Zbl 1403.18016)], by imposing suitable finiteness conditions on decomposition spaces, arrived at Möbius decomposition spaces as a far-reaching generalization of the notion of Möbius category in [\textit{P. Leroux}, Cah. Topologie Géom. Différ. Catégoriques 16, 280--282 (1976; Zbl 0364.18001)]. This third part, subsuming discoveries of \textit{F. W. Lawvere} and \textit{M. Menni} [Theory Appl. Categ. 24, 221--265 (2010; Zbl 1236.18001)], introduces the Möbius decomposition space of Möbius intervals, which is shown to be a universal Möbius decomposition space in a precise sense, though its proof is highly fastidious.