Abstract. Two constructions of paths in double categories are studied, providing algebraic versions of the homotopy groupoid of a space. Universal properties of these constructions are presented. The first is seen as the codomain of the universal oplax morphism of double categories and the second, which is a quotient of the first, gives the universal normal oplax morphism. Normality forces an equivalence relation on cells, a special case of which was seen before in the free adjoint construction. These constructions are the object part of 2-comonads which are shown to be oplax idempotent. The coalgebras for these comonads turn out to be Leinster’s fc-multicategories, with representable identities in the second case.

Abstract. This paper gives a definition of an extended topological quantum field theory (TQFT) as a weak 2-functor Z: nCob2→2Vect, by analogy with the description of a TQFT as a functor Z: nCob→Vect. We also show how to obtain such a theory from any finite group G. This theory is related to a topological gauge theory, the Dijkgraaf-Witten model. To give this definition rigorously, we first define a bicategory of cobordisms between cobordisms. We also give some explicit description of a higher-categorical version of Vect, denoted 2Vect, a bicategory of 2-vector spaces. Along the way, we prove several results showing how to construct 2-vector spaces of Vect-valued presheaves on certain kinds of groupoids. In particular, we use the case when these are groupoids whose objects are connections, and whose morphisms are gauge transformations, on the manifolds on which the extended TQFT is to be defined. On cobordisms between these manifolds, we show how a construction of “pullback and pushforward ” of presheaves gives both the morphisms and 2-morphisms in 2Vect for the extended TQFT, and that these

Abstract. We present two generalizations of the Span construction. The first generalization

Abstract. This paper describes a relationship between essentially finite groupoids and 2-vector spaces. In particular, we show to construct 2-vector spaces of Vect-valued presheaves on such groupoids. We define 2-linear maps corresponding to functors between groupoids in both a covariant and contravariant way, which are ambidextrous adjoints. This is used to construct a representation— a weak functor—from Span(Gpd) (the bicategory of groupoids and spans of groupoids) into 2Vect. In this paper we prove this and give the construction in detail. It has applications in constructing quantum field theories, among others. 1.