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Relative Fields

This document defines categorical fields in symmetric monoidal categories. It introduces preliminaries on categories, monoids, and partitions. Simple and cosimple objects are defined, with examples in sets and posets. Fields in commutative rings are characterized as cosimple commutative rings. Categorical fields are then defined as cosimple commutative monoids.

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Frank P Murphy H
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17 views2 pages

Relative Fields

This document defines categorical fields in symmetric monoidal categories. It introduces preliminaries on categories, monoids, and partitions. Simple and cosimple objects are defined, with examples in sets and posets. Fields in commutative rings are characterized as cosimple commutative rings. Categorical fields are then defined as cosimple commutative monoids.

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Frank P Murphy H
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© © All Rights Reserved
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RELATIVE FIELDS

FRANK MURPHY-HERNANDEZ

Abstract. We give a categorification of the notion of field over any symmetric


monoidal category using the lattice of quotients of a commutative monoid.

Introduction
1. Preliminaries
We only consider locally small categories. For C a category and X ∈ C an
object, we recall that a subobject of X is an isomorphism class of a monomorphism
with codomain X. Analogously, a quotient of X is an isomorphism class of a
epimorphism with domain X
Our reference for monoidal categories are [1] and [3].
Let C be a symmetric monoidal category. We denote by MC (C) the category of
commutative monoids over C.
For a cardinal κ, the Bell number Bκ is the cardinality of the set of partitions of
a set with cardinality κ, see [2].
A commutative ring A is called regular if any A-module is flat, see [4].
For a poset P , we denote by B(P ) the category induced by P .
For a monoid M , we denote by B(M ) the category induced by M .

2. Simplicity
Definition 2.1. Let C be a category. If C has a initial object, then we denote by 0.
If C has a final object, then we denote by 1. If C has a zero object, then we denote
it by 0.
Definition 2.2. Let C be a category and X ∈ C. We denote by S(X) its class of
subobjects and by Q(X) its class of quotients.
Definition 2.3. Let C be a category with initial object and X ∈ C. We denote by
ζX : 0 −→ X the unique morphism that exists. We say that X is simple object if
S(X) has two elements, ζX and 1X .
Definition 2.4. Let C be a category with final object and X ∈ C. We denote by
ωX : X −→ 1 the unique morphism that exists. We say that X is cosimple object if
Q(X) has two elements, ωX and 1X .
For an abelian category we do not earn something fruitful to make this distinction
because we can identify S(X) with Q(X). So the concept of simple object and
cosimple object coincide.

Date: July 23, 2020.


2000 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary ****, ****; Secondary ****, ****.
Key words and phrases. ***,****,****.
1
2 FRANK MURPHY-HERNANDEZ

Example 2.1. Let C be the category of sets. Then 1 = {∗} is a simple set. Now,
let f, g : X −→ Y be a surjective functions, and we consider the repective partitions
Xf := {f −1 (y) | y ∈ Y } and Xg := {g −1 (y) | y ∈ Y }. So we have that f and g
represent the same quotient if and only Xg = Xf . Thus the quotients of a set X
correspond to partitions of X. Thus the cardinality of Q(X) is correspond to the
|X|-th Bell number B|X| . If we notice that |X| ≤ |Y | implies | Q(X)| ≤ | Q(Y )|.
We have to check the first bell number to classify the cosimple sets. We have that
B0 = B1 = 1, B2 = 2 and B3 = 5. Therefore 2 = {0, 1} is the unique cosimple
set. rom this example, we can see that the definition of cosimple object makes sense
since it does not coincide with the definition of simple object.
Example 2.2. Let P be a poset. We notices that any morphism in B(P ) is an
epimorphism. Moreover, for an element x ∈ P the set of quotients of x corresponds
to the set of upper bounds of x, this is, Q(x) = {y ∈ P | x ≤ y}. So the cosimple
elements of x are the coatoms of P .
Proposition 2.1. Let C be the category of commutative rings and K ∈ C. Then
K is a cosimple commutative ring if and only if K is a field.
Proof. ⇒) If K is a cosimple commutative ring, then their unique ideals are the 0
and K. Therefore K is a field.
⇐) A ring A is called dominant if any monic epimorphism f : A −→ B is surjec-
tive. Any regular ring is dominant, in particular any field is dominant. So K is a
cosimple commutative ring. 
The last proposition let us describe the fields in the category of commutative
rings in terms of the poset of quotients of a ring.
Example 2.3. Let M a commutative monoid. Then B(M ) is symmetric monoidal
category. An element x of B(M ) is a quotient if and only if it is cancellable.

3. Categorical Fields
Definition 3.1. Let C a symetric monoidal category with final object and K ∈
MC (C). Then we say that K is a field if it is cosimple in MC (C)
Example 3.1.

References
[1] Marcelo Aguiar and Swapneel Arvind Mahajan, Monoidal functors, species and hopf algebras,
vol. 29, American Mathematical Society Providence, RI, 2010.
[2] John H Conway and Richard Guy, The book of numbers, Springer Science & Business Media,
2012.
[3] Pavel Etingof, Shlomo Gelaki, Dmitri Nikshych, and Victor Ostrik, Tensor categories, vol.
205, American Mathematical Soc., 2016.
[4] Bo Stenström, Rings of quotients: an introduction to methods of ring theory, vol. 217, Springer
Science & Business Media, 2012.

Facultad de Ciencias, UNAM, Mexico City


Email address: [email protected]

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