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Main Authors: Cnossen, Bastiaan, Lenz, Tobias, Ramzi, Maxime
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.18278
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author Cnossen, Bastiaan
Lenz, Tobias
Ramzi, Maxime
author_facet Cnossen, Bastiaan
Lenz, Tobias
Ramzi, Maxime
contents Given an $\infty$-category $\mathcal{C}$ with pullbacks, its $(\infty,2)$-category $\mathbf{Span}(\mathcal{C})$ of spans has the universal property of freely adding right adjoints to morphisms in $\mathcal{C}$ satisfying a Beck--Chevalley condition. We show that this universal property is implemented by an $(\infty,2)$-categorical refinement of Barwick's \emph{unfurling construction}: For any right adjointable functor $\mathcal{C} \to \mathrm{Cat}_{\infty}$, the unstraightening of its unique extension to $\mathbf{Span}(\mathcal{C})$ can be explicitly written down as another span $(\infty,2)$-category, and on underlying $(\infty,1)$-categories this recovers Barwick's construction. As an application, we show that the constructions of cartesian normed structures by Nardin--Shah and Cnossen--Haugseng--Lenz--Linskens coincide.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_18278
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Universality of Barwick's unfurling construction
Cnossen, Bastiaan
Lenz, Tobias
Ramzi, Maxime
Algebraic Topology
Category Theory
Given an $\infty$-category $\mathcal{C}$ with pullbacks, its $(\infty,2)$-category $\mathbf{Span}(\mathcal{C})$ of spans has the universal property of freely adding right adjoints to morphisms in $\mathcal{C}$ satisfying a Beck--Chevalley condition. We show that this universal property is implemented by an $(\infty,2)$-categorical refinement of Barwick's \emph{unfurling construction}: For any right adjointable functor $\mathcal{C} \to \mathrm{Cat}_{\infty}$, the unstraightening of its unique extension to $\mathbf{Span}(\mathcal{C})$ can be explicitly written down as another span $(\infty,2)$-category, and on underlying $(\infty,1)$-categories this recovers Barwick's construction. As an application, we show that the constructions of cartesian normed structures by Nardin--Shah and Cnossen--Haugseng--Lenz--Linskens coincide.
title Universality of Barwick's unfurling construction
topic Algebraic Topology
Category Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.18278