Mathematics – Category Theory
Scientific paper
2010-08-10
Mathematics
Category Theory
53 pages, 197 figures. The output pdf file might best be viewed in such as TeX rather than Acrobat
Scientific paper
This reports on the fundamental objects revealed by Ross Street, which he called `orientals'. Street's work was in part inspired by Robert's attempts to use N-category ideas to construct nets of C*-algebras in Minkowski space for applications to relativistic quantum field theory: Roberts' additional challenge was that `no amount of staring at the low dimensional cocycle conditions would reveal the pattern for higher dimensions'. This report takes up this challenge, presenting a natural inductive construction of explicit cubical cocyle conditions, and gives three ways in which the simplicial ones can be derived from these. (A dual string-diagram version of this work, giving rise to a Pascal's triangle of diagrams for cocycle conditions, has been described elsewhere by Street). A consequence of this work is that the Yang-Baxter equation, the `pentagon of pentagons', and higher simplex equations, are in essence different manifestations of the same underlying abstract structure. There has been recent interest in higher-categories, by computer scientists investigating concurrency theory, as well as by physicists, among others. The dual `string' version of this paper makes clear the relationship with higher-dimensional simplex equations in physics. Much work in this area has been done since these notes were written: no attempt has been made to update the original report. However, all diagrams have been redrawn by computer, replacing all original hand-drawn pictures.
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