Double categories of profunctors

Abstract

We characterize virtual double categories of enriched categories, functors, and profunctors by introducing a new notion of double-categorical colimits. Our characterization is strict in the sense that it is up to equivalence between virtual double categories and, at the level of objects, up to isomorphism of enriched categories. Throughout the paper, we treat enrichment in a unital virtual double category rather than in a bicategory or a monoidal category, and, for consistency and better visualization of pasting diagrams, we adopt augmented virtual double categories as a fundamental language for double-categorical concepts.