Smash product of pointed objects in lextensive categories (Q1413885)

This paper proposes a categorical generalization of the (topological) concept of smash product. For a category \({\mathcal X}\) with finite limits and (enough) colimits, one can define the smash product \((X,p)\wedge(Y,q)\) of the objects \((X,p)\) and \((Y,q)\) of the pointed category (1\(\downarrow{\mathcal X})\) as the cokernel of the canonical morphism from \((X,p)+(Y,q)\) to \((X,p)\times(Y,q)\). The authors show that if the finite coproducts (in \({\mathcal X}\)) are pullback stable and all functors A\(\times(-)\colon{\mathcal X}\to{\mathcal X}\) (A\(\in{\mathcal X}\)) preserve certain types of pushouts, then this definition determines a canonical (symmetric and distributive with respect to coproducts) structure on (1\(\downarrow{\mathcal X}\)). If, in addition, \({\mathcal X}\) is lextensive, then it can be recovered from this structure (as the category of objects with counit in (1\(\downarrow{\mathcal X}\))). All these conditions are satisfied, in particular, in lextensive cartesian closed categories with finite colimits, the category of groupoids, and all pretoposes. Several examples are considered in order to evaluate the necessity of the various conditions.