Definition. Lax and Pseudonatural Transformations

2026-09-29 ยท category-theory bicategory

Let ๐น,๐บ:โ„ฌ๏ธ€โ†’๐’ž๏ธ€ be lax functors. A lax natural transformation ๐œŽ:๐นโ‡’๐บ consists of

  1. for each 0-cell ๐‘ฅ, a 1-cell ๐œŽ๐‘ฅ:๐น๐‘ฅโ†’๐บ๐‘ฅ;
  2. for each 1-cell ๐‘“:๐‘ฅโ†’๐‘ฆ, a 2-cell filling the naturality square,

    ๐œŽ๐‘“:๐น๐‘“โ‹†๐œŽ๐‘ฆโ‡’๐œŽ๐‘ฅโ‹†๐บ๐‘“;
  3. such that ๐œŽ๐‘“ is natural in ๐‘“: for a 2-cell ๐œƒ:๐‘“โ‡’๐‘”, (๐น๐œƒโ–ท๐œŽ๐‘ฆ)โ‹†๐œŽ๐‘”=๐œŽ๐‘“โ‹†(๐œŽ๐‘ฅโ—๐บ๐œƒ);
  4. and such that ๐œŽ respects the comparison cells of ๐น and ๐บ: one law relating ๐œŽ1๐‘ฅ to ๐น0, ๐บ0 and the unitors, and one relating ๐œŽ๐‘“โ‹†๐‘” to ๐œŽ๐‘“, ๐œŽ๐‘”, ๐น2, ๐บ2 and the associators.

A lax natural transformation is pseudonatural when every ๐œŽ๐‘“ is invertible. As with pseudofunctors, this is a property, so the pseudonatural transformations ๐นโ‡’๐บ are a full subcategory of the category of lax transformations and modifications.

Between prestacks the 1-cells are taken to be pseudonatural. The reason is biuniversality: a transformation whose components ๐œŽ๐‘ฅ are all equivalences of categories is an equivalence of prestacks only if its naturality cells are invertible, and a biuniversal element should be exactly a representation of a prestack up to such an equivalence.

lax-natural-transformation definition entries/bicategory/lax-natural-transformation.hel