An embedding theorem for tangent categories

DOI10.1016/J.AIM.2017.10.039MaRDI QIDQ1682009zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Publication date 28 November 2017

Published in Advances in Mathematics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.08386

enriched category synthetic differential geometry tangent category

Enriched categories (over closed or monoidal categories) (18D20) Abstract manifolds and fiber bundles (category-theoretic aspects) (18F15) Differentiable manifolds, foundations (58A05)

Abstract: Tangent categories were introduced by Rosicky as a categorical setting for differential structures in algebra and geometry; in recent work of Cockett, Crutwell and others, they have also been applied to the study of differential structure in computer science. In this paper, we prove that every tangent category admits an embedding into a representable tangent category---one whose tangent structure is given by exponentiating by a free-standing tangent vector, as in, for example, any model of Kock and Lawvere's synthetic differential geometry. The key step in our proof uses a coherence theorem for tangent categories due to Leung to exhibit tangent categories as a certain kind of enriched category.

Review text

A tangent structure on a category \(\mathcal C\) is a functor \(T\colon \mathcal C \to \mathcal C\) together with certain natural transformations (and a somewhat long list of conditions on them) which capture the essential properties of the ``tangent bundle functor \(T\colon M \mapsto TM\) on the category of smooth manifolds and the Zariski tangent space functor in the category of schemes. Beyond geometry, this notion is of interest also in computer science. In the case of schemes, the tangent space functor is representable by the scheme \(D = \operatorname{Spec} \mathbb Z[x]/x^2\). Although the tangent functor on smooth manifolds is not representable, a similar construction can be performed in the more general context of synthetic differential geometry. This paper is concerned with the problem of representability of tangent structures. More specifically, it is shown that any category with tangent structure can be embedded in a category whose tangent structure is representable. The proof uses Leung's coherence theorem for tangent categories and enriched category theory. At the end of the paper, an explicit presentation of the representable tangent structure into which a given tangent structure embeds is provided.

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