Paper detail

The classifying topos of a topological bicategory

For any topological bicategory B, the Duskin nerve NB of B is a simplicial space. We introduce the classifying topos BB of B as the Deligne topos of sheaves Sh(NB) on the simplicial space NB. It is shown that the category of geometric morphisms Hom(Sh(X),BB) from the topos of sheaves Sh(X) on a topological space X to the Deligne classifying topos is naturally equivalent to the category of principal B-bundles. As a simple consequence, the geometric realization |NB| of the nerve NB of a locally contractible topological bicategory B is the classifying space of principal B-bundles, giving a variant of the result of Baas, Bokstedt and Kro derived in the context of bicategorical K-theory. We also define classifying topoi of a topological bicategory B using sheaves on other types of nerves of a bicategory given by Lack and Paoli, Simpson and Tamsamani by means of bisimplicial spaces, and we examine their properties.