Diagrams indexed by Grothendieck constructions

Abstract

Let I be a small indexing category, G: I op ! Cat be a functor and BG 2 Cat denote the Grothendieck construction on G. We define and study Quillen pairs between the category of diagrams of simplicial sets (resp. categories) indexed on BG and the category of I-diagrams over N(G) (resp. G). As an application we obtain a Quillen equivalence between the categories of presheaves of simplicial sets (resp. groupoids) on a stack M and presheaves of simplicial sets (resp. groupoids) over M. The motivation for this paper was the study of homotopy theory of (pre)sheaves on a stack. Since the site associated to a stack M is a Grothedieck construction this led us to an investigation of the homotopy theory of diagrams indexed on a category which is itself a Grothendieck construction (of a diagram of small categories). The body of the paper is concerned with analyzing various Quillen pairs between diagram categories. These adjunctions are of general interest and we present some examples not related to the theory of stacks. We conclude the paper with the applications to stacks. Stacks were introduced in algebraic geometry in order to parametrize families of objects when the presence of automorphisms prevented representability by a scheme or even a sheaf [A, DM, Gi]. Recently stacks have come to play an important role in algebraic topology. Complex oriented cohomology theories give rise to stacks over the moduli stack of formal groups and in certain situations, conversely, stacks over the moduli stack of formal groups give rise to spectra [G, R2, GHMR, B]. One fundamental example is the spectrum of topological modular forms [Hp] which is associated to the moduli stack of elliptic curves. Classically, stacks were defined as categories fibered in groupoids over a site C which satisfy descent [DM, Definition 4.1]. In [H] we show that a category fibered in groupoids F over C is a stack if and only if the assignment satisfies the homotopy sheaf