Rewriting in higher dimensional linear categories and application to the affine oriented Brauer category

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a rewriting theory of linear monoidal categories. Those categories are a particular case of what we will define as linear (n, p)-categories. We will also define linear (n, p)-polygraphs, a linear adapation of n-polygraphs, to present linear (n -- 1, p)-categories. We focus then on linear (3, 2)-polygraphs to give presentations of linear monoidal categories. We finally give an application of this theory in linear (3, 2)-polygraphs to prove a basis theorem on the category AOB with a new method using a rewriting property defined by van Ostroom: decreasingness.