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category theory Category theory is a general theory of mathematical structures and their relations that was introduced by Samuel Eilenberg and Saunders Mac Lane in the middle of the 20th century in their foundational work on algebraic topology. Nowadays, ca ...
, a discipline within mathematics, the notion of lax functor between bicategories generalizes that of
functor In mathematics, specifically category theory, a functor is a mapping between categories. Functors were first considered in algebraic topology, where algebraic objects (such as the fundamental group) are associated to topological spaces, and m ...
s between categories. Let ''C,D'' be bicategories. We denote composition i
diagrammatic order
A ''lax functor P from C to D'', denoted P: C\to D, consists of the following data: * for each object ''x'' in ''C'', an object P_x\in D; * for each pair of objects ''x,y ∈ C'' a functor on morphism-categories, P_: C(x,y)\to D(P_x,P_y); * for each object ''x∈C'', a 2-morphism P_:\text_\to P_(\text_x) in ''D''; * for each triple of objects, ''x,y,z ∈C'', a 2-morphism P_(f,g): P_(f);P_(g)\to P_(f;g) in ''D'' that is natural in ''f: x→y'' and ''g: y→z''. These must satisfy three commutative diagrams, which record the interaction between left unity, right unity, and associativity between ''C'' and ''D''. See http://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/pseudofunctor. A lax functor in which all of the structure 2-morphisms, i.e. the P_ and P_{x,y,z} above, are invertible is called a pseudofunctor. Category theory