Comparing operadic theories of n-category

DOI10.4310/HHA.2011.V13.N2.A14MaRDI QIDQ650989zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Eugenia Cheng

Publication date 8 December 2011

Published in Homology, Homotopy and Applications (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/0809.2070

zbMATH Keywords

\(n\)-categoryoperad

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Enriched categories (over closed or monoidal categories) (18D20)

Abstract: We give a framework for comparing on the one hand theories of n-categories that are weakly enriched operadically, and on the other hand n-categories given as algebras for a contractible globular operad. Examples of the former are the definition by Trimble and variants (Cheng-Gurski) and examples of the latter are the definition by Batanin and variants (Leinster). We will show how to take a theory of n-categories of the former kind and produce a globular operad whose algebras are the n-categories we started with. We first provide a generalisation of Trimble's original theory that allows for the use of other parametrising operads in a very general way, via the notion of categories weakly enriched in V where the weakness is parametrised by an operad P in the category V. We define weak n-categories by iterating the weak enrichment construction using a series of parametrising operads P_i. We then show how to construct from such a theory an n-dimensional globular operad for each $ngeq0$ whose algebras are precisely the n-categories we constructed by iterated weak enrichment, and we show that the resulting globular operad is contractible precisely when the operads P_i are contractible. We then show how the globular operad associated with Trimble's topological definition is related to the globular operad used by Batanin to define fundamental n-groupoids of spaces.

Review text

The paper is dedicated to comparing the theories of \(n\)-categories, that are weakly enriched operadically and \(n\)-categories, given as algebras for a contractible globular operad. Till now many different notions of weak \(n\)-categories appeared in the literature. Therefore the problem of comparing these theories is natural and some comparison functors were constructed already. In the presented paper the author compares the theories of Trimble and Batanin, which are examples of two theories, respectively, mentioned in the begining. Trimble's theory uses clasical operads, therefore the comparison makes possible to apply the well-known theory of clasical operads to the study of \(n\)-catgories. The author generalises Trimble's original definition to ``iterative operadic theory of \(n\)-categories, introduced in the paper. The main result shows that any iterative operadic theory of \(n\)-categories is operadic in the sense of Batanin/Leinster. The obtained results are applied to Trimble's original definition, in order to relate it to the operad used by Batanin. The author makes remarks on related works in this field, in particular, on alternative approaches to this subject developed by Batanin, Cisinski and Weber.

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