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Bicategory
In mathematics, a bicategory (or a weak 2-category) is a concept in category theory used to extend the notion of category to handle the cases where the composition of morphisms is not (strictly) associative, but only associative ''up to'' an isomorphism. The notion was introduced in 1967 by Jean Bénabou. Bicategories may be considered as a weakening of the definition of 2-categories. A similar process for 3-categories leads to tricategories, and more generally to weak ''n''-categories for ''n''-categories. Definition Formally, a bicategory B consists of: * objects ''a'', ''b'', ... called 0-''cells''; * morphisms ''f'', ''g'', ... with fixed source and target objects called 1-''cells''; * "morphisms between morphisms" ρ, σ, ... with fixed source and target morphisms (which should have themselves the same source and the same target), called 2-''cells''; with some more structure: * given two objects ''a'' and ''b'' there is a category B(''a'', ''b'') whose objects are the 1- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2-categories
In category theory, a strict 2-category is a category with "morphisms between morphisms", that is, where each hom-set itself carries the structure of a category. It can be formally defined as a category enriched over Cat (the category of categories and functors, with the monoidal structure given by product of categories). The concept of 2-category was first introduced by Charles Ehresmann in his work on enriched categories in 1965. The more general concept of bicategory (or ''weak'' 2-''category''), where composition of morphisms is associative only up to a 2-isomorphism, was introduced in 1968 by Jean Bénabou.Jean Bénabou, Introduction to bicategories, in Reports of the Midwest Category Seminar, Springer, Berlin, 1967, pp. 1--77. Definition A 2-category C consists of: * A class of 0-''cells'' (or ''objects'') , , .... * For all objects and , a category \mathbf(A,B). The objects f,g: A \to B of this category are called 1-''cells'' and its morphisms \alpha: f \Righ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Category Theory
Category theory is a general theory of mathematical structures and their relations that was introduced by Samuel Eilenberg and Saunders Mac Lane in the middle of the 20th century in their foundational work on algebraic topology. Nowadays, category theory is used in almost all areas of mathematics, and in some areas of computer science. In particular, many constructions of new mathematical objects from previous ones, that appear similarly in several contexts are conveniently expressed and unified in terms of categories. Examples include quotient spaces, direct products, completion, and duality. A category is formed by two sorts of objects: the objects of the category, and the morphisms, which relate two objects called the ''source'' and the ''target'' of the morphism. One often says that a morphism is an ''arrow'' that ''maps'' its source to its target. Morphisms can be ''composed'' if the target of the first morphism equals the source of the second one, and morphism compos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Weak N-category
In category theory, a weak ''n''-category is a generalization of the notion of strict ''n''-category where composition and identities are not strictly associative and unital, but only associative and unital up to coherent equivalence. This generalisation only becomes noticeable at dimensions two and above where weak 2-, 3- and 4-categories are typically referred to as bicategories, tricategories, and tetracategories. The subject of weak ''n''-categories is an area of ongoing research. History There is currently much work to determine what the coherence laws for weak ''n''-categories should be. Weak ''n''-categories have become the main object of study in higher category theory. There are basically two classes of theories: those in which the higher cells and higher compositions are realized algebraically (most remarkably Michael Batanin's theory of weak higher categories) and those in which more topological models are used (e.g. a higher category as a simplicial set satisfy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tricategory
In mathematics, a tricategory is a kind of structure of category theory studied in higher-dimensional category theory. Whereas a weak 2-category is said to be a ''bicategory'', a weak 3-category is said to be a ''tricategory'' (Gordon, Power & Street 1995; Baez & Dolan 1996; Leinster 1998). Tetracategories are the corresponding notion in dimension four. Dimensions beyond three are seen as increasingly significant to the relationship between knot theory and physics. John Baez John Carlos Baez (; born June 12, 1961) is an American mathematical physicist and a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) in Riverside, California. He has worked on spin foams in loop quantum gravity, appl ..., R. Gordon, A. J. Power and Ross Street have done much of the significant work with categories beyond bicategories thus far. See also * Weak ''n''-category References External linksThe Dimensional Ladder [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monoidal Category
In mathematics, a monoidal category (or tensor category) is a category \mathbf C equipped with a bifunctor :\otimes : \mathbf \times \mathbf \to \mathbf that is associative up to a natural isomorphism, and an object ''I'' that is both a left and right identity for ⊗, again up to a natural isomorphism. The associated natural isomorphisms are subject to certain coherence conditions, which ensure that all the relevant diagrams commute. The ordinary tensor product makes vector spaces, abelian groups, ''R''-modules, or ''R''-algebras into monoidal categories. Monoidal categories can be seen as a generalization of these and other examples. Every (small) monoidal category may also be viewed as a "categorification" of an underlying monoid, namely the monoid whose elements are the isomorphism classes of the category's objects and whose binary operation is given by the category's tensor product. A rather different application, of which monoidal categories can be considered an abstractio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Up To
Two Mathematical object, mathematical objects ''a'' and ''b'' are called equal up to an equivalence relation ''R'' * if ''a'' and ''b'' are related by ''R'', that is, * if ''aRb'' holds, that is, * if the equivalence classes of ''a'' and ''b'' with respect to ''R'' are equal. This figure of speech is mostly used in connection with expressions derived from equality, such as uniqueness or count. For example, ''x'' is unique up to ''R'' means that all objects ''x'' under consideration are in the same equivalence class with respect to the relation ''R''. Moreover, the equivalence relation ''R'' is often designated rather implicitly by a generating condition or transformation. For example, the statement "an integer's prime factorization is unique up to ordering" is a concise way to say that any two lists of prime factors of a given integer are equivalent with respect to the relation ''R'' that relates two lists if one can be obtained by reordering (permutation) from the other. As anot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isomorphism
In mathematics, an isomorphism is a structure-preserving mapping between two structures of the same type that can be reversed by an inverse mapping. Two mathematical structures are isomorphic if an isomorphism exists between them. The word isomorphism is derived from the Ancient Greek: ἴσος ''isos'' "equal", and μορφή ''morphe'' "form" or "shape". The interest in isomorphisms lies in the fact that two isomorphic objects have the same properties (excluding further information such as additional structure or names of objects). Thus isomorphic structures cannot be distinguished from the point of view of structure only, and may be identified. In mathematical jargon, one says that two objects are . An automorphism is an isomorphism from a structure to itself. An isomorphism between two structures is a canonical isomorphism (a canonical map that is an isomorphism) if there is only one isomorphism between the two structures (as it is the case for solutions of a univer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean Bénabou
Jean Bénabou (1932 – 11 February 2022) was a Moroccan-born French mathematician, known for his contributions to category theory. He directed the Research Seminar in Category Theory at the Institut Henri Poincaré and Institut de mathématiques de Jussieu – Paris Rive Gauche, Institut de mathématiques de Jussieu from 1969 to 2001. Bénabou died on 11 February 2022. Partial bibliography * * * * * * See also * References 1932 births 2022 deaths 20th-century French mathematicians Category theorists Moroccan emigrants to France People from Rabat External links * {{France-mathematician-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Associative
In mathematics, the associative property is a property of some binary operations, which means that rearranging the parentheses in an expression will not change the result. In propositional logic, associativity is a valid rule of replacement for expressions in logical proofs. Within an expression containing two or more occurrences in a row of the same associative operator, the order in which the operations are performed does not matter as long as the sequence of the operands is not changed. That is (after rewriting the expression with parentheses and in infix notation if necessary), rearranging the parentheses in such an expression will not change its value. Consider the following equations: \begin (2 + 3) + 4 &= 2 + (3 + 4) = 9 \,\\ 2 \times (3 \times 4) &= (2 \times 3) \times 4 = 24 . \end Even though the parentheses were rearranged on each line, the values of the expressions were not altered. Since this holds true when performing addition and multiplication on any real ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Morphism
In mathematics, particularly in category theory, a morphism is a structure-preserving map from one mathematical structure to another one of the same type. The notion of morphism recurs in much of contemporary mathematics. In set theory, morphisms are functions; in linear algebra, linear transformations; in group theory, group homomorphisms; in topology, continuous functions, and so on. In category theory, ''morphism'' is a broadly similar idea: the mathematical objects involved need not be sets, and the relationships between them may be something other than maps, although the morphisms between the objects of a given category have to behave similarly to maps in that they have to admit an associative operation similar to function composition. A morphism in category theory is an abstraction of a homomorphism. The study of morphisms and of the structures (called "objects") over which they are defined is central to category theory. Much of the terminology of morphisms, as well as the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Category (mathematics)
In mathematics, a category (sometimes called an abstract category to distinguish it from a concrete category) is a collection of "objects" that are linked by "arrows". A category has two basic properties: the ability to compose the arrows associatively and the existence of an identity arrow for each object. A simple example is the category of sets, whose objects are sets and whose arrows are functions. '' Category theory'' is a branch of mathematics that seeks to generalize all of mathematics in terms of categories, independent of what their objects and arrows represent. Virtually every branch of modern mathematics can be described in terms of categories, and doing so often reveals deep insights and similarities between seemingly different areas of mathematics. As such, category theory provides an alternative foundation for mathematics to set theory and other proposed axiomatic foundations. In general, the objects and arrows may be abstract entities of any kind, and the n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
