Compact closed category

In category theory, a branch of mathematics, compact closed categories are a general context for treating dual objects. The idea of a dual object generalizes the more familiar concept of the dual of a finite-dimensional vector space. So, the motivating example of a compact closed category is FdVect, the category having finite-dimensional vector spaces as objects and linear maps as morphisms, with tensor product as the monoidal structure. Another example is Rel, the category having sets as objects and relations as morphisms, with Cartesian monoidal structure.

Symmetric compact closed category

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A symmetric monoidal category   is compact closed if every object   has a dual object. If this holds, the dual object is unique up to canonical isomorphism, and is denoted  .

In a bit more detail, an object   is called the dual of   if it is equipped with two morphisms called the unit   and the counit  , satisfying the equations

 

and

 

where   are the introduction of the unit on the left and right, respectively, and   is the associator.

For clarity, we rewrite the above compositions diagrammatically. In order for   to be compact closed, we need the following composites to equal  :

 

and  :

 

Definition

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More generally, suppose   is a monoidal category, not necessarily symmetric, such as in the case of a pregroup grammar. The above notion of having a dual   for each object A is replaced by that of having both a left and a right adjoint,   and  , with a corresponding left unit  , right unit  , left counit  , and right counit  . These must satisfy the four yanking conditions, each of which are identities:

 
 

and

 
 

That is, in the general case, a compact closed category is both left and right-rigid, and biclosed.

Non-symmetric compact closed categories find applications in linguistics, in the area of categorial grammars and specifically in pregroup grammars, where the distinct left and right adjoints are required to capture word-order in sentences. In this context, compact closed monoidal categories are called (Lambek) pregroups.

Properties

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Compact closed categories are a special case of monoidal closed categories, which in turn are a special case of closed categories.

Compact closed categories are precisely the symmetric autonomous categories. They are also *-autonomous.

Every compact closed category C admits a trace. Namely, for every morphism  , one can define

 

which can be shown to be a proper trace. It helps to draw this diagrammatically:  

Examples

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The canonical example is the category FdVect with finite-dimensional vector spaces as objects and linear maps as morphisms. Here   is the usual dual of the vector space  .

The category of finite-dimensional representations of any group is also compact closed.

The category Vect, with all vector spaces as objects and linear maps as morphisms, is not compact closed; it is symmetric monoidal closed.

Simplex category

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The simplex category can be used to construct an example of non-symmetric compact closed category. The simplex category is the category of non-zero finite ordinals (viewed as totally ordered sets); its morphisms are order-preserving (monotone) maps. We make it into a monoidal category by moving to the arrow category, so the objects are morphisms of the original category, and the morphisms are commuting squares. Then the tensor product of the arrow category is the original composition operator. The left and right adjoints are the min and max operators; specifically, for a monotone map f one has the right adjoint

 

and the left adjoint

 

The left and right units and counits are:

 
 
 
 

One of the yanking conditions is then

 

The others follow similarly. The correspondence can be made clearer by writing the arrow   instead of  , and using   for function composition  .

Dagger compact category

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A dagger symmetric monoidal category which is compact closed is a dagger compact category.

Rigid category

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A monoidal category that is not symmetric, but otherwise obeys the duality axioms above, is known as a rigid category. A monoidal category where every object has a left (resp. right) dual is also sometimes called a left (resp. right) autonomous category. A monoidal category where every object has both a left and a right dual is sometimes called an autonomous category. An autonomous category that is also symmetric is then a compact closed category.

References

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Kelly, G.M.; Laplaza, M.L. (1980). "Coherence for compact closed categories". Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra. 19: 193–213. doi:10.1016/0022-4049(80)90101-2.