Australian Category Seminar

Higher order operads and their algebras from the point of view of the theory of monoidal globular categories

Michael Batanin·6 November 1996

The theory of monoidal globular categories gives me the necessary tools for defining the notion of weak n-category.

I call an ω-collection of spans a globular functor from the globular category of trees Tr to Span. The coherence theorem allows me to introduce, on the category of ω-collections, a sort of monoidal structure (in some weak sense). This monoidal structure generalizes a monoidal structures on the nonsymmetric collections used in the definition of the (nonsymmetric) operads.

So I define an n-operad to be a monoid in the category of n-collections.

One can also define an n-operad of endomorphisms generated by an ω-globular set (or more generally by a globular object ( i.e. a globular functor from U to C, where U is a terminal globular category) in a monoidal globular category C). Finally, a weak ω-category is an ω-globular set together with a map from a contractible (in a suitable sense) ω-operad to the operad of endomorphisms of this globular set.

For example, the strict ω-category are the algebras of a terminal ω-operad. The weak 2-categories are exactly the bicategories and the category of contractible 2-operads is isomorphic to the category of non-symmetric chaotic Cat-operads (this means that we have in every dimension a category which is equivalent to one-object one-arrow category). There exists a universal ω-operad which acts on every weak n-category (including n=ω.) Recently, Clemens Berger suggested to me a construction of a contractible 3-operad whose algebras are Gray-categories.

The theory of monoidal globular categories allows also the development of the theory of internal weak ω-category and cocategory objects that will be useful for the problem of modelling of homotopy types.

Back