2-Stacks over bisites

Abstract We generalize the concept of stack one dimension higher, introducing a notion of 2-stack suitable for a trihomomorphism from a 2-category equipped with a bitopology into the tricategory of bicategories. Moreover, we give a characterization of 2-stacks in terms of explicit conditions, that are easier to use in practice. These explicit conditions are effectiveness conditions for appropriate data of descent on objects, 1-cells and 2-cells, generalizing the usual stacky gluing conditions one dimension higher. Furthermore, we prove some new results on bitopologies. The main one is that every object of a subcanonical bisite can be seen as the sigma-bicolimit of each covering bisieve over it. This generalizes one dimension higher a well-know result for subcanonical Grothendieck sites.