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General 2-Dimensional Adjunctions, Universal Monads and Simplicial Structures

We use the general notion of 2-dimensional adjunction with given coherence equations as introduced by MacDonald-Stone, building on earlier work by Gray, to derive coherence equations for a general 2-monad, which we refer to as a lax-Gray monad. The free lax-Gray 2-monad on one object may be regarded as the suspension of a lax 2-dimensional analogue of the simplicial category Delta. We call this analogue Delta LG for lax-Gray Delta. This is analogous to the way that the free 1-monad Mnd (as presented in Schanuel-Street) is a concrete example of the suspension of the simplicial category Delta, described by Mac Lane.