Related papers: Monoidal 2-categories from foam evaluation

We begin with a brief sketch of what is known and conjectured concerning braided monoidal 2-categories and their applications to 4d topological quantum field theories and 2-tangles (surfaces embedded in 4-dimensional space). Then we give…

We give a purely combinatorial construction of colored $\mathfrak{sl}_n$ link homology. The invariant takes values in a 2-category where 2-morphisms are given by foams, singular cobordisms between $\mathfrak{sl}_n$ webs; applying a…

For every oriented surface of finite type, we construct a functorial Khovanov homology for links in a thickening of the surface, which takes values in a categorification of the corresponding gl(2) skein module. The latter is a mild…

We create a framework for odd Khovanov homology in the spirit of Bar-Natan's construction for the ordinary Khovanov homology. Namely, we express the cube of resolutions of a link diagram as a diagram in a certain 2-category of chronological…

We construct a bigraded (co)homology theory which depends on a parameter a, and whose graded Euler characteristic is the quantum sl(2) link invariant. We follow Bar-Natan's approach to tangles on one side, and Khovanov's sl(3) theory for…

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…

We study the monoidal structure of the standard strictification functor $\textrm{st}:\mathbf{Bicat} \rightarrow \mathbf{2Cat}$. In doing so, we construct monoidal structures on the 2-category whose objects are bicategories and on the…

We give a purely combinatorial formula for evaluating closed decorated foams. Our evaluation gives an integral polynomial and is directly connected to an integral equivariant version of the $\mathfrak{sl}_N$ link homology categorifying the…

Many structures of interest in two-dimensional category theory have aspects that are inherently strict. This strictness is not a limitation, but rather plays a fundamental role in the theory of such structures. For instance, a monoidal…

We study monoidal 2-categories and bicategories in terms of categorical extensions and the cohomological data they determine in appropriate cohomology theories with coefficients in Picard groupoids. In particular, we analyze the hierarchy…

Layered monoidal theories provide a categorical framework for studying scientific theories at different levels of abstraction, via string diagrammatic algebra. We introduce models for three closely related classes of layered monoidal…

In this paper, we address the construction of homotopy bicategories of $(\infty,2)$-categories, which we take as being modeled by 2-fold Segal spaces. Our main result is the concrete construction of a functor $h_2$ from the category of…

For each N > 3, we define a monoidal functor from Elias and Khovanov's diagrammatic version of Soergel's category of bimodules to the category of sl(N) foams defined by Mackaay, Stosic and Vaz. We show that through these functors Soergel's…

We define bicategories internal to 2-categories. When the ambient 2-category is symmetric monoidal categories, this provides a convenient framework for encoding the structures of a symmetric monoidal 3-category. This framework is well…

We introduce a complete set of combinatorial data that encode the category $2\mathfrak{Cob}$ of all $2$-cobordisms. As an application, we show that the local monoids of $2\mathfrak{Cob}$ do not have finitely axiomatizable equational…

In this thesis we define and study a categorification of the sl(N)-link polynomial using foams, for N\geq 3. For N=3 we define the universal sl(3)-link homology, using foams, which depends on three parameters and show that it is functorial,…

This article is intended as a reference guide to various notions of monoidal categories and their associated string diagrams. It is hoped that this will be useful not just to mathematicians, but also to physicists, computer scientists, and…

We define a cohomology for an arbitrary $K$-linear semistrict semigroupal 2-category $(\mathfrak{C},\otimes)$ (called in the paper a Gray semigroup) and show that its first order (unitary) deformations, up to the suitable notion of…

Let $R$ be a commutative ring with unit. We develop a Hochschild cohomology theory in the category $\mathcal{F}$ of linear functors defined from an essentially small symmetric monoidal category enriched in $R$-Mod, to $R$-Mod. The category…

We prove that the monoidal 2-category of cospans of finite linear orders and surjections is the universal monoidal category with an object X with a semigroup and a cosemigroup structures, where the two structures satisfy a certain…