Definitions
Transfors between 2-categories
Morphisms in 2-categories
Structures in 2-categories
Limits in 2-categories
Structures on 2-categories
A tabulator is a kind of double limit, i.e. a limit in a double category, generalizing the notion of the graph of a profunctor (also called the cocollage). Dually, the notion of a cotabulator generalizes that of the cograph of a profunctor (also called the collage).
The tabulator of a vertical morphism in a double category consists of an object and a 2-morphism with the universal properties:
there is a unique horizontal morphism such that .
If only the first universal property holds, we say that the vertical morphism has a -tabulator.
A double category has all -tabulators (resp. -cotabulators) if and only if the identity-assigning map has a right adjoint (resp. left adjoint).
A double category has all small double limits if and only if it has small double products, double equalisers, and tabulators.
A tabulator in a 2-category, viewed as a double category, is a power by the interval category.
An early reference for what is essentially the universal property of an (effective) tabulator is the definition of a tabulation, based on a similar definition in an allegory:
The definition of a (co)tabulator was first introduced in Section 5.3 of:
The -dimensional universal property of a tabulator is stated in Section 3 of:
Other references on (co)tabulators include:
Susan Niefield, Span, cospan, and other double categories Theory and Applications of Categories_, 26, 2012. (url)
Marco Grandis and Bob Paré, Span and cospan representations of weak double categories, Categories and General Algebraic Structures with Applications 6.Speical Issue on the Occasion of Banaschewski’s 90th Birthday (I) (2017): 85-105.
Marco Grandis, Higher Dimensional Categories. From Double to Multiple Categories, 2019. (doi:10.1142/11406)
Last revised on April 6, 2024 at 21:02:45. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.