Related papers: Building the bicategory Span$_2(\mathcal {C})$
We discuss the notion of a span of cospans and define, for them, horizonal and vertical composition. These compositions satisfy the interchange law if working in a topos $\mathbf{C}$ and if the span legs are monic. A bicategory is then…
A compact closed bicategory is a symmetric monoidal bicategory where every object is equipped with a weak dual. The unit and counit satisfy the usual "zig-zag" identities of a compact closed category only up to natural isomorphism, and the…
Interest in weak cubical n-categories arises in various contexts, in particular in topological field theories. In this paper, we describe a concept of double bicategory, namely a strict model of the theory of bicategories in Bicat. We show…
In a bicategory of spans (an example of a 'generic bicategory') the factorization of a span (s,t) as the span (s,1) followed by (1,t) satisfies a simple universal property with respect to all factorizations in terms of the generic…
If $\mathbf{C}$ is a category with pullbacks then there is a bicategory with the same objects as $\mathbf{C}$, spans as morphisms, and maps of spans as 2-morphisms, as shown by Benabou. Fong has developed a theory of "decorated" cospans,…
Bicategories of spans are characterized as cartesian bicategories in which every comonad has an Eilenberg-Moore ob ject and every left adjoint arrow is comonadic.
Algebra objects in $\infty$-categories of spans admit a description in terms of $2$-Segal objects. We introduce a notion of span between $2$-Segal objects and extend this correspondence to an equivalence of $\infty$-categories.…
Span categories provide an abstract framework for formalizing mathematical models of certain systems. The mathematical descriptions of some systems, such as classical mechanical systems, require categories that do not have pullbacks, and…
We show that Segal spaces, and more generally category objects in an $\infty$-category $\mathcal{C}$, can be identified with associative algebras in the double $\infty$-category of spans in $\mathcal{C}$. We use this observation to prove…
We establish the universal properties of the bicategory of polynomials, considering both cartesian and general morphisms between these polynomials. A direct proof of these universal properties would be impractical due to the complicated…
We show how the notion of intercategory encompasses a wide variety of three-dimensional structures from the literature, notably duoidal categories, monoidal double categories, cubical bicategories, double bicategories and Gray categories.…
In this paper we study the topology of the cobordism category of open and closed strings. This is a 2-category in which the objects are compact one-manifolds whose boundary components are labeled by an indexing set (the set of "D-branes"),…
The paper defines polynomials in a bicategory $\mathscr{M}$. Polynomials in bicategories $\mathrm{Spn}\mathscr{C} \ $ of spans in a finitely complete category $\mathscr{C} \ $ agree with polynomials in $\mathscr{C} \ $ as defined by Nicola…
We define a bicategory with \'etale, locally compact groupoids as objects and suitable correspondences, that is, spaces with two commuting actions as arrows; the 2-arrows are injective, equivariant continuous maps. We prove that the usual…
After two papers on weak cubical categories and {\it collarable} cospans, respectively, we put things together and construct a {\it weak} cubical category of cubical {\it collared} cospans of topological spaces. We also build a second…
Recently, there has been growing interest in bicategorical models of programming languages, which are "proof-relevant" in the sense that they keep distinct account of execution traces leading to the same observable outcomes, while assigning…
We consider the ordinary category Span(C) of (isomorphism classes of) spans of morphisms in a category C with finite limits as needed, composed horizontally via pullback, and give a general criterion for a quotient of Span(C) to be an…
We establish a correspondence between modules and spans of algebras within a general monoidal 2-category $\mathfrak{C}$. Specifically, for an algebra $A$ in $\mathfrak{C}$, we construct a normalized lax 3-functor from the 2-category of…
We define a category parameterizing Calabi-Yau algebra objects in an infinity category of spans. Using this category, we prove that there are equivalences of infinity categories relating, firstly: 2-Segal simplicial objects in C to algebra…
In some bicategories, the 1-cells are `morphisms' between the 0-cells, such as functors between categories, but in others they are `objects' over the 0-cells, such as bimodules, spans, distributors, or parametrized spectra. Many…