Towards a theory of natural directed paths

Abstract: We introduce the abstract setting of presheaf category on a thick category of cubes. Precubical sets, symmetric transverse sets, symmetric precubical sets and the new category of (non-symmetric) transverse sets are examples of this structure. All these presheaf categories share the same metric and homotopical properties from a directed homotopy point of view. This enables us to extend Raussen's notion of natural $d$-path for each of them. Finally, we adapt Ziemia\'{n}ski's notion of cube chain to this abstract setting and we prove that it has the expected behavior on precubical sets. As an application, we verify that the formalization of the parallel composition with synchronization of process algebra using the coskeleton functor of the category of symmetric transverse sets has a category of cube chains with the correct homotopy type.