QP-structures of degree 3 and CLWX 2-algebroids

Abstract

In this paper, we give the notion of a CLWX 2-algebroid and show that a QP-structure of degree 3 gives rise to a CLWX 2-algebroid. This is the higher analogue of the result that a QP-structure of degree 2 gives rise to a Courant algebroid. A CLWX 2-algebroid can also be viewed as a categorified Courant algebroid. We show that one can obtain a Lie 3-algebra from a CLWX 2-algebroid. Furthermore, CLWX 2-algebroids are constructed from split Lie 2-algebroids and split Lie 2-bialgebroids.