Fibrantly-induced model structures

Abstract: We develop new techniques for constructing model structures from a given class of cofibrations, together with a class of fibrant objects and a choice of weak equivalences between them. As a special case, we obtain a more flexible version of the classical right-induction theorem in the presence of an adjunction. Namely, instead of lifting the classes of fibrations and weak equivalences through the right adjoint, we now only do so between fibrant objects, which allows for a wider class of applications. We use these new tools to exhibit three examples of model structures on $\mathrm{DblCat}$, the category of double categories and double functors. First, we recover the weakly horizontally invariant model structure introduced by the last three named authors in [MSV22b]. Next, we define a new model structure that makes the square functor $\mathrm{Sq}\colon2\mathrm{Cat}\to\mathrm{DblCat}$ into a Quillen equivalence, providing a double categorical model for the homotopy theory of 2-categories. Finally, we give an example where a fibrantly-induced model structure exists, but the right-induced one does not.