A two-categorical Snake Lemma

Abstract

We prove a Snake Lemma for 2-categories. Working in a 2-category with a strong bizero object, we develop 2-kernels and 2-cokernels, 2-monomorphisms and 2-epimorphisms as fully faithful and cofully faithful 1-cells, short 2-exact sequences and normal image factorisations, and we prove a two-dimensional Normal Short Five Lemma. We then introduce the dinversion of an antinormal pair and the notion of a homologically self-dual 2-category, characterised equally by the self-duality of homology, by a Pure Snake Lemma and by a Third Isomorphism Property. Two-dimensional di-exactness implies homological self-duality. Our main result is the Snake Lemma in a 2-di-exact 2-category: a ladder of 2-exact rows with normal verticals induces a 2-exact six-term sequence, with a connecting 1-cell that is 2-natural in the ladder. Di-exactness can be traded for two hypotheses that are not self-dual: that dinversion preserve normality, and that normal 2-epimorphisms compose. Everything specialises, on passing to a locally discrete 2-category, to its classical counterpart. We close by exhibiting three models: a 2-di-exact 2-category of abelian categories containing $\mathsf{Coh}(X)$ for every noetherian scheme $X$; the locally ordered 2-category of complete modular lattices, in which 2-di-exactness amounts to Dedekind's transposition principle; and the 2-category of Hilbert lattices, which is not 2-di-exact but satisfies the non-self-dual hypotheses, by a theorem of Mackey on pairs of closed subspaces.