Bicategorical Idempotent Completion

RESUMO

In recent years, higher categorical variants of idempotents have become an object of interest. Notably, they appear when categorifying algebraic structures motivated by mathematical physics. Working in the setting of bicategories, we give a rigorous definition of the bicategorical idempotent completion as outlined by Gaiotto and Johnson-Freyd in arXiv:1905.09566 . We show that this agrees with the Cauchy completion of a locally idempotent complete bicategory in the sense of Lawvere.