Products and Coproducts
Let’s consider the Cartesian product of two sets
and
. Classically we think of this as the set of all pairs
with
and
. But we can also characterize it just in terms of functions.
Specifically, comes with two projection functions
and
, defined by
and
. If we take any other set
with functions
and
we can define the function
by
. Then we see that
and
. Further, this function from
to
is the only such function.
Now let’s do away with those nasty elements altogether and draw this diagram:
What does this mean? Well, it’s like the diagram I drew for products of groups. The product of and
is a set
with functions
and
so that for any other set
with functions to
and
there exists a unique arrow to
making the diagram commute. Since we’ve written this definition without ever really referring to elements we can just pick it up and drop it into any other category. Many descriptions of categorical products stop here, but let’s push a bit further.
Let’s consider a category containing (among others) objects
and
. From this we’re going to build a new category. An object of our category will be a diagram that looks like
in
. A morphism from
to
will be a morphism
in
so that
and
.
Now what’s a product in ? It’s a terminal object of this category we’ve constructed! That is, it’s one of these diagrams so that every other diagram has a unique morphism (as defined above) to it. This definition makes sense in any category
, though the category we build from a given pair of objects may not have a terminal object, so a given pair of objects of
may not have a product in
. If every pair of objects of
has a product in
, we say that
“has products”.
So, the existence of Cartesian products of sets shows that has products. Similarly,
has products, as do
,
(groupoids),
(small categories), and pretty much all our familiar categories from algebra.
What about something like a preordered set , considered as a category? What would “product” mean, when written in this language? Well, given elements
and
the product
will have arrows to
and
, so
and
. Also, for any other element
with
and
we have
—
has an arrow to both
and
, so it has an arrow to
. That is,
is a greatest lower bound of
and
, and the category has products if and only if every pair of elements has such a greatest lower bound.
And it gets better. If we consider a category that has products, the product defines a functor
! If we have arrows
and
then I say we’ll have an arrow
. Indeed, if we consider
and
then we’ll get an arrow from
to
. And this construction preserves compositions and identities. For compositions, start with this diagram:
and draw in the induced arrows ,
, and
. Then use the uniqueness part of the universal property to show that the composite of the first two must be the same as the third. Do a similar thing to verify that identities are also preserved.
Finally, we can flip all the arrows in what we’ve said to get the dual notion: coproducts. Use this diagram:
and define the coproduct to be an initial object in a certain category of diagrams. Check that in this property is satisfied by disjoint unions. In
coproducts are free products. In a preorder, coproducts are least upper bounds. And, of course, the coproduct defines a functor from
to
.
There’s a fair bit to digest here, but it’s worth it. The next few ideas are really very similar. Alternatively, you could take this to mean that if you don’t completely get it now there are a few more examples in the pipe that may help.
[…] off is that and are both subsets of . That is, there are arrows and . So maybe the union is the coproduct of the two sets. Well, it’s a good guess, but there’s a problem. There may be some […]
Pingback by Pushouts and pullbacks « The Unapologetic Mathematician | June 14, 2007 |
[…] products, coproducts, equalizers, coequalizers, pullbacks, pushouts… We’ve got products and coproducts of two objects at a time, equalizers and coequalizers of two morphisms at a time, and pushouts and […]
Pingback by Multiple products, coproducts, equalizers, coequalizers, pullbacks, pushouts… « The Unapologetic Mathematician | June 15, 2007 |
[…] know that any functor that has a right adjoint preserves colimits! The disjoint union of sets is a coproduct, and the direct sum of vector spaces is a biproduct, which means it’s also a coproduct. Thus […]
Pingback by The Sum of Subspaces « The Unapologetic Mathematician | July 21, 2008 |
Am I right in thinking that the category of diagrams you create in paragraph 5 only makes sense if the category C with which you start contains pull-backs? The reason I ask is that when trying to prove that you get a category, I got stuck on composing the morphisms. If you have pull-backs, I know what to do. Otherwise…
No, a morphism is just an arrow between the two middle terms that makes the triangles on the sides commute. Compose morphisms just by composing those arrows, and the larger triangles will automatically commute.
Ah…I see where I was confused now. The X and Y you chose are fixed and you are only letting the middle term change. I was letting the X and Y vary.
[…] We should also note that the category of root systems has binary (and thus finite) coproducts. They both start the same way: given root systems and in inner-product spaces and , we take the […]
Pingback by Coproduct Root Systems « The Unapologetic Mathematician | January 25, 2010 |
[…] measurable spaces, but we have a broader perspective here. Indeed, we should be asking if this is a product object in the category of measurable spaces! That is, the underlying space comes equipped with projection […]
Pingback by Product Measurable Spaces « The Unapologetic Mathematician | July 15, 2010 |
[…] we want to show that we have (finite) products in the category of manifolds. Specifically, if and are – and -dimensional smooth manifolds, […]
Pingback by Product Manifolds « The Unapologetic Mathematician | March 7, 2011 |
Thanks! I understood your explanation better than Mathworld’s.