Open AccessCategories: Between Cubes and Globes. Sketch I
Author(s) -
Yuri Bespalov
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
ukrainian journal of physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.213
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 2071-0194
pISSN - 2071-0186
DOI - 10.15407/ujpe64.12.1125
Subject(s) - mathematics , morphism , partially ordered set , monad (category theory) , functor , polytope , combinatorics , context (archaeology) , unit cube , enriched category , projection (relational algebra) , subspace topology , discrete mathematics , pure mathematics , paleontology , mathematical analysis , algorithm , biology
For a finite partially ordered set I, we define an abstract polytope PI which is a cube or a globe in the cases of discrete or linear poset, respectively. For a poset P, we have built a small category ♦P with finite lower subsets in P as objects. This category ♦P = ♦P+♦P- is factorized into a product of two wide subcategories ♦P+ of faces and ♦P- of degenerations. One can imagine a degeneration from I to J ⊂ I as a projection of an abstract polytope PI to the subspace spanned by J. Morphisms in ♦P+ with fixed target I are identified with faces of PI . The composition in ♦P admits the natural geometric interpretation. On the category ♦I of presheaves on ♦I , we construct a monad of free category in two steps: for a terminal presheaf, the free category is obtained via a generalized nerve construction; in the general case, the cells of a nerve are colored by elements of the initial presheaf. Strict P-fold categories are defined as algebras over this monad. All constructions are functorial in P. The usual theory of globular and cubical higher categories can be translated in a natural way into our general context.