Monoidal Categories and Multiextensions

Abstract

We associate to a group-like monoidal grupoid ${\mathcal C}$a principal bundle E satisfying most of the axioms defining a biextension. The obstruction to the existence of a genuine biextension structure on E is exhibited. When this obstruction vanishes, the biextension E is alternating and a trivialization of E induces a trivialization of${\mathcal C}$. The analogous theory for monoidal n-categories is also examined, as well as the appropriate generalization of these constructions in a sheaf-theoretic context. In the n-categorial situation, this produces a higher commutator calculus, in which some interesting generalizations of the notion of an alternating biextension occur. For n=2, the corresponding cocycles are constructed explicitly, by a partial symmetrization process, from the cocycle describing the n-category.