Compactly Generated Stacks: A Cartesian Closed Theory of Topological Stacks

Abstract

A convenient bicategory of topological stacks is constructed which is both complete and Cartesian closed. This bicategory, called the bicategory of compactly generated stacks, is the analogue of classical topological stacks, but for a different Grothendieck topology. In fact, there is an equivalence of bicategories between compactly generated stacks and those classical topological stacks which admit locally compact Hausdorff atlases. Compactly generated stacks are also equivalent to a bicategory of topological groupoids and principal bundles, just as in the classical case. If a classical topological stack and a compactly generated stack have a presentation by the same topological groupoid, then they restrict to the same stack over locally compact Hausdorff spaces and are homotopy equivalent.