Higher-Dimensional Algebra VI: Lie 2-Algebras
Here's a new paper that studies categorified Lie algebras: Higher-Dimensional Algebra VI: Lie 2-algebras John C. Baez and Alissa S. Crans The theory of Lie algebras can be categorified starting from a new notion of "2-vector space", which we define as an internal category in Vect. There is a 2-category Vect having these 2-vector spaces as objects, "linear functors" as morphisms and "linear natural transformations" as 2-morphisms. We define a "semistrict Lie 2-algebra" to be a 2-vector space L equipped with a skew-symmetric bilinear functor satisfying the Jacobi identity up to a linear natural transformation called the "Jacobiator", which in turn must satisfy a certain law of its own. This law is closely related to the Zamolodchikov tetrahedron equation, and indeed we prove that any semistrict Lie 2-algebra gives a solution of this equation, just as any Lie algebra gives a solution of the Yang-Baxter equation. We construct a 2-category of semistrict Lie 2-algebras and prove that it is 2-equivalent to the 2-category of 2-term L-infinity algebras in the sense of Stasheff. We also study strict and skeletal Lie 2-algebras, obtaining the former from strict Lie 2-groups and using the latter to classify Lie 2-algebras in terms of 3rd cohomology classes in Lie algebra cohomology. This paper will soon appear on the mathematics arXiv, but the PDF version on my website looks a tiny bit better: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/hda6.pdf
participants (1)
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John Baez