Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T09:02:49.947Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Restriction categories III: colimits, partial limits and extensivity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2007

ROBIN COCKETT
Affiliation:
Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, T2N 1N4, Canada
STEPHEN LACK
Affiliation:
School of Computing and Mathematics, University of Western Sydney, Sydney, Australia

Abstract

A restriction category is an abstract formulation for a category of partial maps, defined in terms of certain specified idempotents called the restriction idempotents. All categories of partial maps are restriction categories; conversely, a restriction category is a category of partial maps if and only if the restriction idempotents split. Restriction categories facilitate reasoning about partial maps as they have a purely algebraic formulation.

In this paper we consider colimits and limits in restriction categories. As the notion of restriction category is not self-dual, we should not expect colimits and limits in restriction categories to behave in the same manner. The notion of colimit in the restriction context is quite straightforward, but limits are more delicate. The suitable notion of limit turns out to be a kind of lax limit, satisfying certain extra properties.

Of particular interest is the behaviour of the coproduct, both by itself and with respect to partial products. We explore various conditions under which the coproducts are ‘extensive’ in the sense that the total category (of the related partial map category) becomes an extensive category. When partial limits are present, they become ordinary limits in the total category. Thus, when the coproducts are extensive we obtain as the total category a lextensive category. This provides, in particular, a description of the extensive completion of a distributive category.

Type
Paper
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bucalo, A., Führmann, C. and Simpson, A. (1999) Equational lifting monads. In: CTCS'99: Conference on Category Theory and Computer Science (Edinburgh). Electron. Notes Theor. Comput. Sci. 29 Paper No. 29004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carboni, A. (1987) Bicategories of partial maps. Cah. de Top. Geom. Diff. 28 111126.Google Scholar
Carboni, A. (1991) Matrices, relations, and group representations. J. Algebra 136 497529.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carboni, A., Lack, S. and Walters, R. F. C. (1993) Introduction to extensive and distributive categories. J. Pure Appl. Algebra 84 145158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cockett, J. R. B. (1993) Introduction to distributive categories. Mathematical Structures in Computer Science 3 277307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cockett, J. R. B. and Lack, S. (2002) Restriction categories I: Categories of partial maps. Theoretical Computer Science 270 223259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cockett, J. R. B. and Lack, S. (2003) Restriction categories II: Partial map classification. Theoretical Computer Science 294 61102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cockett, J. R. B. and Lack, S. (in preparation) Restriction categories IV: Enriched restriction categories.Google Scholar
Cockett, J. R. B. and Lack, S. (2001) The extensive completion of a distributive category. Theory Appl. Categ. 8 541554.Google Scholar
Curien, P.-L. and Obtulowicz, A. (1989) Partiality, Cartesian closedness, and toposes. Inform. and Comput. 80 5095.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Di Paola, R. A. and Heller, A. (1987) Dominical categories: recursion theory without elements. J. Symbolic Logic 52 595635.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freyd, P. J. and Scedrov, A. (1990) Categories, allegories, North-Holland Mathematical Library 39Google Scholar
Hoehnke, H.-J. (1977) On partial algebras. Colloq. Math. Soc. János Bolyai 29 373412.Google Scholar
Kock, A. (1972) Strong functors and monoidal monads. Arch. Math. 23 113120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mac Lane, S. (1971) Categories for the Working Mathematician, Springer-Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, E. P. and Rosolini, G. (1988) Categories of partial maps. Information and Computation 79 94130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar