Kan extensions and the calculus of modules for $\infty$-categories

TL;DR

This paper develops a calculus of modules for $ abla$-categories within an $ abla$-cosmos, establishing a multicategory structure called a virtual equipment, and applies it to define and analyze pointwise Kan extensions in $ abla$-categories.

Contribution

It introduces a general calculus of modules for $ abla$-categories in an $ abla$-cosmos, forming a virtual equipment structure and linking Kan extensions to limits and colimits.

Findings

Modules form a multicategory-like structure called a virtual equipment.

The calculus simplifies the study of pointwise Kan extensions.

Connections between Kan extensions and limits/colimits in $ abla$-categories are established.

Abstract

Various models of $(\infty,1)$-categories, including quasi-categories, complete Segal spaces, Segal categories, and naturally marked simplicial sets can be considered as the objects of an $\infty$-cosmos. In a generic $\infty$-cosmos, whose objects we call $\infty$-categories, we introduce modules (also called profunctors or correspondences) between $\infty$-categories, incarnated as as spans of suitably-defined fibrations with groupoidal fibers. As the name suggests, a module from $A$ to $B$ is an $\infty$-category equipped with a left action of $A$ and a right action of $B$, in a suitable sense. Applying the fibrational form of the Yoneda lemma, we develop a general calculus of modules, proving that they naturally assemble into a multicategory-like structure called a virtual equipment, which is known to be a robust setting in which to develop formal category theory. Using the calculus of modules, it is straightforward to define and study pointwise Kan extensions, which we relate, in the case of cartesian closed $\infty$-cosmoi, to limits and colimits of diagrams valued in an $\infty$-category, as introduced in previous work.