module Cat.Diagram.Image {o β} (C : Precategory o β) where
open Cat.Reasoning C open Initial open βObj open βHom open /-Obj open /-Hom private variable a b : Ob ββ² : Level
Imagesπ
Let be an ordinary function between sets (or, indeed, arbitrary types). Its image can be computed as the subset , but this description does not carry over to more general categories: More abstractly, we can say that the image embeds into , and admits a map from (in material set theory, this is itself β structurally, it is called the corestriction of ). Furthermore, these two maps factor , in that:
While these are indeed two necessary properties of an image, they fail to accurately represent the set-theoretic construction: Observe that, e.g.Β for , we could take , taking itself and . This factoring clearly recovers , as . But by taking this as the image, weβve lost the information that lands in the evens!
We can refine the abstract definition by saying that, for a mono to be the image of , it must be the smallest subobject of through which factors β given any other factoring of , we must have in the proset of subobjects of , i.e.Β there exists some such that .
In general categories, monomorphisms of may be the wrong notion of βsubobjectβ to use. For example, in topology, weβd rather talk about the image which admits a subspace inclusion onto . We may expand the definition above to work for an arbitrary subclass of the monomorphisms of , by requiring that the -image of be the smallest -subobject through which factors.
Since keeping track of all the factorisations by hand would be fiddly, we formalise the idea of image here using comma categories, namely the idea of universal morphisms as in the construction of adjoints. Fix a morphism , and consider it as an object of the slice category .
For a given subclass of monomorphisms , there is a full subcategory of spanned by those maps in β let us call it β admitting an evident fully faithful inclusion . An -image of is a universal morphism from to .
Class-of-monos : β β β Type _ Class-of-monos β = Ξ£[ M β (β {a b} β Hom a b β Type β) ] (β {a b} {f : Hom a b} β M f β is-monic f) M-image : β {a b} β Class-of-monos ββ² β Hom a b β Type _ M-image {a = a} {b} M f = Universal-morphism (cut f) (Forget-full-subcat {C = Slice C b} {P = (Ξ» o β M .fst (o .map))})
The image is the -image for = the class of all monomorphisms.
Image : β {a b} β Hom a b β Type _ Image {b = b} f = Universal-morphism (cut f) (Forget-full-subcat {C = Slice C b} {P = is-monic β map})
Friendly interfaceπ
Since this definition is incredibly abstract and indirect, we provide
a very thin wrapper module over M-image
which unpacks the
definition into friendlier terms.
module M-Image {a b} {M : Class-of-monos ββ²} {f : Hom a b} (im : M-image M f) where
The first thing to notice is that, being an initial object in the comma category , we have an object β is the image object, and is the inclusion map:
Im : Ob Im = im .bot .y .object .domain Imβcodomain : Hom Im b Imβcodomain = im .bot .y .object .map
Furthermore, this map is both an inclusion (since is a class of monomorphisms), and an -inclusion at that:
Imβcodomain-is-M : M .fst Imβcodomain Imβcodomain-is-M = im .bot .y .witness Imβcodomain-is-monic : is-monic Imβcodomain Imβcodomain-is-monic = M .snd Imβcodomain-is-M
So far, weβve been looking at the βcodomainβ part of the object in the comma category. We also have the βmorphismβ part, which provides our (universal) factoring of :
corestrict : Hom a Im corestrict = im .bot .map .map image-factors : Imβcodomain β corestrict β‘ f image-factors = im .bot .map .commutes
This is also the smallest factorisation, which takes quite a lot of data to express. Letβs see it:
Suppose we have
- Some other object ; and,
- An -monomorphism ; and,
- A corestriction map ; such that
- .
Then we have a map
(written imβ€other-image
in the code
below), and the canonical inclusion
factors through
:
universal : β {c} (m : Hom c b) (M-m : M .fst m) (i : Hom a c) β m β i β‘ f β Hom Im c universal m M i p = im .hasβ₯ obj .centre .Ξ² .map where obj : βObj _ _ obj .x = tt obj .y = restrict (cut m) M obj .map = record { map = i ; commutes = p } universal-factors : β {c} {m : Hom c b} {M : M .fst m} {i : Hom a c} β {p : m β i β‘ f} β m β universal m M i p β‘ Imβcodomain universal-factors {m = m} {M} {i} {p} = im .hasβ₯ _ .centre .Ξ² .commutes universal-commutes : β {c} {m : Hom c b} {M : M .fst m} {i : Hom a c} β {p : m β i β‘ f} β universal m M i p β corestrict β‘ i universal-commutes {m = m} {ism} {i} {p} = M .snd ism _ _ (pulll universal-factors Β·Β· image-factors Β·Β· sym p)