A note on the Wehrheim-Woodward category (Q420297)

The problem of quantization investigates how to go from classical physics to quantum physics by using theory of categories, that is, it is concerned with the search of a functor from the ``classical category'', with symplectic manifolds as objects, to a ``quantum category'', whose objects are Hilbert spaces or, more generally, Fukaya categories, categories of \(D\)-modules, etc. From the classical point of view, it is useful to include among the morphisms \(X\leftarrow Y\) not only symplectomorphisms but more general canonical relations. A canonical relation between symplectic manifolds \((X,\omega_X)\) and \((Y,\omega_Y)\) is a smooth relation \(X\leftarrow Y\) which is Lagrangian as a submanifold of \((X,\omega_X) \times (Y,-\omega_Y)\). The point is that the composition of canonical relations can produce relations which are not smooth submanifolds. \textit{K. Wehrheim} and \textit{C. T. Woodward} [Quantum Topol. 1, No. 2, 129--170 (2010; Zbl 1206.53088)] have proposed a solution to this problem introducing a category whose morphisms are equivalence classes of composable sequences of canonical relations, with composition given by concatenation. The first part of the paper is concerned with a reminder of the categories which are relevant in this context. First, it deals with \textbf{SREL} the category of relations between symplectic manifolds, then with the path category P(\textbf{SREL}) and, finally, with the Wehrheim-Woodward category WW(\textbf{SREL}). Some useful properties are proved along the way. The main result in this paper is that any morphism in the Wehrheim-Woodward category \([f_1 ,\dots,f_n ]\) can be represented by a sequence of only two canonical relations \([A,B]\), where \(A\) is a reduction and \(B\) a coreduction. The decomposition is not unique. More concretely, the author proves: Let \((f_1,\ldots,f_n)\) be a composable sequence of canonical relations in \textbf{SREL}, with \(f_i \in\text{Hom}(X_{i-1},X_i)\) for \(i=1,\ldots n\). Then, there is a symplectic manifold \(Q\) with canonical relations \(A \in \text{Hom}(X_0,Q)\) and \(B \in \text{Hom}(Q,X_n)\) such that \(A\) is a reduction, \(B\) is a coreduction, and \([f_1,\ldots,f_n]=[A,B]\) in WW(\textbf{SREL}). The proof is given for the case \(n=4\), but it can be easily translated to the general case.