Equivalence of categoriesIn , a branch of abstract mathematics, an equivalence of categories is a relation between two that establishes that these categories are "essentially the same". There are numerous examples of categorical equivalences from many areas of mathematics. Establishing an equivalence involves demonstrating strong similarities between the mathematical structures concerned.
Duality (mathematics)In mathematics, a duality translates concepts, theorems or mathematical structures into other concepts, theorems or structures, in a one-to-one fashion, often (but not always) by means of an involution operation: if the dual of A is B, then the dual of B is A. Such involutions sometimes have fixed points, so that the dual of A is A itself. For example, Desargues' theorem is self-dual in this sense under the standard duality in projective geometry. In mathematical contexts, duality has numerous meanings.
Disjoint unionIn mathematics, a disjoint union (or discriminated union) of a family of sets is a set often denoted by with an injection of each into such that the of these injections form a partition of (that is, each element of belongs to exactly one of these images). A disjoint union of a family of pairwise disjoint sets is their union. In , the disjoint union is the coproduct of the , and thus defined up to a bijection. In this context, the notation is often used. The disjoint union of two sets and is written with infix notation as .
Section (category theory)In , a branch of mathematics, a section is a right inverse of some morphism. , a retraction is a left inverse of some morphism. In other words, if and are morphisms whose composition is the identity morphism on , then is a section of , and is a retraction of . Every section is a monomorphism (every morphism with a left inverse is left-cancellative), and every retraction is an epimorphism (every morphism with a right inverse is right-cancellative). In algebra, sections are also called split monomorphisms and retractions are also called split epimorphisms.
Opposite categoryIn , a branch of mathematics, the opposite category or dual category Cop of a given C is formed by reversing the morphisms, i.e. interchanging the source and target of each morphism. Doing the reversal twice yields the original category, so the opposite of an opposite category is the original category itself. In symbols, . An example comes from reversing the direction of inequalities in a partial order. So if X is a set and ≤ a partial order relation, we can define a new partial order relation ≤op by x ≤op y if and only if y ≤ x.
Lattice (order)A lattice is an abstract structure studied in the mathematical subdisciplines of order theory and abstract algebra. It consists of a partially ordered set in which every pair of elements has a unique supremum (also called a least upper bound or join) and a unique infimum (also called a greatest lower bound or meet). An example is given by the power set of a set, partially ordered by inclusion, for which the supremum is the union and the infimum is the intersection.
Homotopy theoryIn mathematics, homotopy theory is a systematic study of situations in which maps can come with homotopies between them. It originated as a topic in algebraic topology but nowadays is studied as an independent discipline. Besides algebraic topology, the theory has also been used in other areas of mathematics such as algebraic geometry (e.g., A1 homotopy theory) and (specifically the study of ). In homotopy theory and algebraic topology, the word "space" denotes a topological space.
Concrete categoryIn mathematics, a concrete category is a that is equipped with a faithful functor to the (or sometimes to another category, see Relative concreteness below). This functor makes it possible to think of the objects of the category as sets with additional structure, and of its morphisms as structure-preserving functions. Many important categories have obvious interpretations as concrete categories, for example the and the , and trivially also the category of sets itself. On the other hand, the is not concretizable, i.
Equaliser (mathematics)In mathematics, an equaliser is a set of arguments where two or more functions have equal values. An equaliser is the solution set of an equation. In certain contexts, a difference kernel is the equaliser of exactly two functions. Let X and Y be sets. Let f and g be functions, both from X to Y. Then the equaliser of f and g is the set of elements x of X such that f(x) equals g(x) in Y. Symbolically: The equaliser may be denoted Eq(f, g) or a variation on that theme (such as with lowercase letters "eq").
MonomorphismIn the context of abstract algebra or universal algebra, a monomorphism is an injective homomorphism. A monomorphism from X to Y is often denoted with the notation . In the more general setting of , a monomorphism (also called a monic morphism or a mono) is a left-cancellative morphism. That is, an arrow f : X → Y such that for all objects Z and all morphisms g1, g2: Z → X, Monomorphisms are a categorical generalization of injective functions (also called "one-to-one functions"); in some categories the notions coincide, but monomorphisms are more general, as in the examples below.
