A horizontal categorification of Gel'fand duality (Q610688)

The famous Gelfand duality says that the category of compact Hausdorff topological spaces is dual to the category of unital commutative \(C^*\)-algebras; I.~Gelfand and M.~Naimark were inspired by the Pontryagin duality for the locally compact abelian groups, which in turn has its roots in the harmonic analysis of J.~Fourier. This duality together with the Serre-Swan theorem and the notion of Morita equivalence form the foundation of noncommutative topology as we know it. As it is usual nowadays, such a fundamental result requires to be put in a proper categorical environment in order to be generalized to its fullest extent; this goal has been pursued by many authors, starting with I.~Kaplansky, J.~M.~G. Fell, and others. The authors of the paper under review generalize the Gelfand duality as follows. On the analytic side, a category \({\mathcal A}\) of full commutative \(C^*\)-categories is introduced; this is a horizontal categorification of the notion of commutative \(C^*\)-algebra taken from [\textit{P.~Bertozzini, R.~Conti} and \textit{W.~Lewkeeratiyutkul}, Non-commutative geometry, categories and quantum physics, East-West J. Math., Spec. Vol., 213--259 (2007; Zbl 1182.46058)]. On the topological side, a category \({\mathcal T}\) of full topological spaceoids is defined; these are triples \(({\mathcal E},\pi, {\mathcal X})\) of unital rank one Fell bundles over a product involutive topological category \({\mathcal X}\). With the Serre-Swan theorem in mind, a section functor \(\Gamma: {\mathcal T}\to {\mathcal A}\) is defined along with a spectrum functor \(\Sigma: {\mathcal A}\to {\mathcal T}\). Finally, a Gelfand transform \({\mathcal G}_{\mathcal C}: {\mathcal C}\to\Gamma(\Sigma({\mathcal C}))\) is introduced as a bijective \(*\)-functor. The main result (Theorem 6.2) asserts that the Gelfand transform of a commutative full \(C^*\)-category \({\mathcal C}\) is a full isometric \(*\)-functor. Thus, Theorem 6.2 generalizes the classic Gelfand duality. Normally, the texts on category theory are hard to read (and, possibly, to write) due to exotic notation and lack of good examples; the present paper is a pleasant exception, where the notation is natural and examples are abundant and persuasive. The paper is clearly written, which makes it accessible (and highly recommended) to graduate students with interest in noncommutative geometry and topology.