Cubical $(\omega,p)$-categories

TL;DR

This paper introduces cubical $(oldsymbol{ extomega,p})$-categories, establishing their equivalence with globular $oldsymbol{ extomega}$-categories and exploring their structural properties and invertibility notions.

Contribution

It defines cubical $(oldsymbol{ extomega,p})$-categories, proves their equivalence with globular categories, and develops the theory of invertibility and transformations within this framework.

Findings

Equivalence between globular and cubical $( extomega,p)$-categories for all p

Explicit description of lax, oplax, and pseudo transfors

Cubical $( extomega,1)$-categories have symmetric structures

Abstract

In this article we introduce the notion of cubical $(\omega,p)$-categories, for $p \in \mathbb N \cup \{\omega\}$. We show that the equivalence between globular and groupoid $\omega$-categories proven by Al-Agl, Brown and Steiner induces an equivalence between globular and cubical $(\omega,p)$-categories for all $p \geq 0$. In particular we recover in a more explicit fashion the equivalence between globular and cubical groupoids proven by Brown and Higgins. We also define the notion of $(\omega,p)$-augmented directed complexes, and show that Steiner's adjunction between augmented directed complexes and globular $\omega$-categories induces adjunctions between $(\omega,p)$-augmented directed complexes and both globular and cubical $(\omega,p)$-categories. Combinatorially, the difficulty lies in defining the appropriate notion of invertibility for a cell in a cubical $\omega$-category. We investigate three such possible definitions and the relationship between them. We show that cubical $(\omega,1)$-categories have a natural structure of symmetric cubical categories. We give an explicit description of the notions of lax, oplax and pseudo transfors between cubical categories, the latter making use of the notion of invertible cell defined previously.