MathOverflow will be down for maintenance for approximately 3 hours, starting Monday evening (06/24/2013) at approximately 9:00 PM Eastern time (UTC-4).
show/hide this revision's text 2 added answer

I'm looking for the name of a certain n-category definition. (Someone explained it to me a couple of years ago. I remember the definition, but not the name. Without the name it's difficult to search for a citation. I want the citation in order to explain something we're not doing in a paper.)

For background, consider the Moore loop space $\Omega_r$ of loops of length $r$ (that is, parameterized by the interval $[0,r]$). We have a strictly associative composition $\Omega_r\times \Omega_s\to \Omega_{r+s}$. The main idea of an "xxxx" n-category is to imitate this idea in higher dimensions. The $k$-morphisms are parameterised by $k$-dimensional rectangles with sides of lengths $r_1,\ldots,r_k$. Gluing rectangles together gives $k$ different strictly associative ways to compose $k$-morphisms.

Question: What is "xxxx" above?

Bonus question: What's the best (or any) citation for this idea?


EDIT: It turns out the definition I was trying to remember is unpublished work of Ulrike Tillmann. But the version from Ronnie Brown linked to in David Roberts' answer is pretty similar (for my purposes, at least).

show/hide this revision's text 1

What's the name of this flavor of n-category?

I'm looking for the name of a certain n-category definition. (Someone explained it to me a couple of years ago. I remember the definition, but not the name. Without the name it's difficult to search for a citation. I want the citation in order to explain something we're not doing in a paper.)

For background, consider the Moore loop space $\Omega_r$ of loops of length $r$ (that is, parameterized by the interval $[0,r]$). We have a strictly associative composition $\Omega_r\times \Omega_s\to \Omega_{r+s}$. The main idea of an "xxxx" n-category is to imitate this idea in higher dimensions. The $k$-morphisms are parameterised by $k$-dimensional rectangles with sides of lengths $r_1,\ldots,r_k$. Gluing rectangles together gives $k$ different strictly associative ways to compose $k$-morphisms.

Question: What is "xxxx" above?

Bonus question: What's the best (or any) citation for this idea?