In mathematics, an endomorphism is a morphism from a mathematical object to itself. An endomorphism that is also an isomorphism is an automorphism. For example, an endomorphism of a vector space V is a linear map f: V → V, and an endomorphism of a group G is a group homomorphism f: G → G. In general, we can talk about endomorphisms in any category. In the category of sets, endomorphisms are functions from a set S to itself.
In algebra, a homomorphism is a structure-preserving map between two algebraic structures of the same type. The word homomorphism comes from the Ancient Greek language: ὁμός meaning "same" and μορφή meaning "form" or "shape". However, the word was apparently introduced to mathematics due to a (mis)translation of German ähnlich meaning "similar" to ὁμός meaning "same". The term "homomorphism" appeared as early as 1892, when it was attributed to the German mathematician Felix Klein (1849–1925).
In mathematics, a category is a collection of "objects" that are linked by "arrows". A category has two basic properties: the ability to compose the arrows associatively and the existence of an identity arrow for each object. A simple example is the category of sets, whose objects are sets and whose arrows are functions.
In mathematics, specifically category theory, adjunction is a relationship that two functors may have, intuitively corresponding to a weak form of equivalence between two related categories. Two functors that stand in this relationship are known as adjoint functors, one being the left adjoint and the other the right adjoint. Pairs of adjoint functors are ubiquitous in mathematics and often arise from constructions of "optimal solutions" to certain problems, such as the construction of a free group on a set in algebra, or the construction of the Stone–Čech compactification of a topological space in topology.
In mathematics, specifically in category theory, a preadditive category is another name for an Ab-category, i.e., a category that is enriched over the category of abelian groups, Ab. That is, an Ab-categoryC is a category such that every hom-set Hom(A,B) in C has the structure of an abelian group, and composition of morphisms is bilinear, in the sense that composition of morphisms distributes over the group operation. In formulas:
In category theory, an epimorphism is a morphism f : X → Y that is right-cancellative in the sense that, for all objects Z and all morphisms g1, g2: Y → Z,
In mathematics, and more specifically in abstract algebra, a *-algebra is a mathematical structure consisting of two involutive ringsR and A, where R is commutative and A has the structure of an associative algebra over R. Involutive algebras generalize the idea of a number system equipped with conjugation, for example the complex numbers and complex conjugation, matrices over the complex numbers and conjugate transpose, and linear operators over a Hilbert space and Hermitian adjoints. However, it may happen that an algebra admits no involution.
In mathematics, and more specifically in abstract algebra, an element x of a *-algebra is self-adjoint if . A self-adjoint element is also Hermitian, though the reverse doesn't necessarily hold.
In mathematics, a monoidal category is a category equipped with a bifunctor
In mathematics, the idea of a free object is one of the basic concepts of abstract algebra. Informally, a free object over a set A can be thought of as being a "generic" algebraic structure over A: the only equations that hold between elements of the free object are those that follow from the defining axioms of the algebraic structure. Examples include free groups, tensor algebras, or free lattices.
In category theory, a branch of mathematics, a monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors. An endofunctor is a functor mapping a category to itself, and a monad is an endofunctor together with two natural transformations required to fulfill certain coherence conditions. Monads are used in the theory of pairs of adjoint functors, and they generalize closure operators on partially ordered sets to arbitrary categories. Monads are also useful in the theory of datatypes and in functional programming languages, allowing languages with non-mutable states to do things such as simulate for-loops; see Monad.
In mathematics, a comma category is a construction in category theory. It provides another way of looking at morphisms: instead of simply relating objects of a category to one another, morphisms become objects in their own right. This notion was introduced in 1963 by F. W. Lawvere, although the technique did not become generally known until many years later. Several mathematical concepts can be treated as comma categories. Comma categories also guarantee the existence of some limits and colimits. The name comes from the notation originally used by Lawvere, which involved the comma punctuation mark. The name persists even though standard notation has changed, since the use of a comma as an operator is potentially confusing, and even Lawvere dislikes the uninformative term "comma category".
In mathematics the Karoubi envelope of a category C is a classification of the idempotents of C, by means of an auxiliary category. Taking the Karoubi envelope of a preadditive category gives a pseudo-abelian category, hence the construction is sometimes called the pseudo-abelian completion. It is named for the French mathematician Max Karoubi.
In mathematics, especially in category theory, a closed monoidal category is a category that is both a monoidal category and a closed category in such a way that the structures are compatible.
In category theory, string diagrams are a way of representing morphisms in monoidal categories, or more generally 2-cells in 2-categories.
In category theory, a branch of mathematics, dagger compact categories first appeared in 1989 in the work of Sergio Doplicher and John E. Roberts on the reconstruction of compact topological groups from their category of finite-dimensional continuous unitary representations. They also appeared in the work of John Baez and James Dolan as an instance of semistrict k-tuply monoidal n-categories, which describe general topological quantum field theories, for n = 1 and k = 3. They are a fundamental structure in Samson Abramsky and Bob Coecke's categorical quantum mechanics.
In the mathematical field of category theory, a dagger symmetric monoidal category is a monoidal category that also possesses a dagger structure. That is, this category comes equipped not only with a tensor product in the category theoretic sense but also with a dagger structure, which is used to describe unitary morphisms and self-adjoint morphisms in : abstract analogues of those found in FdHilb, the category of finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces. This type of category was introduced by Peter Selinger as an intermediate structure between dagger categories and the dagger compact categories that are used in categorical quantum mechanics, an area that now also considers dagger symmetric monoidal categories when dealing with infinite-dimensional quantum mechanical concepts.
In mathematics, particularly in abstract algebra, a semigroup with involution or a *-semigroup is a semigroup equipped with an involutive anti-automorphism, which—roughly speaking—brings it closer to a group because this involution, considered as unary operator, exhibits certain fundamental properties of the operation of taking the inverse in a group: uniqueness, double application "cancelling itself out", and the same interaction law with the binary operation as in the case of the group inverse. It is thus not a surprise that any group is a semigroup with involution. However, there are significant natural examples of semigroups with involution that are not groups.
In mathematics, the complexification or universal complexification of a real Lie group is given by a continuous homomorphism of the group into a complex Lie group with the universal property that every continuous homomorphism of the original group into another complex Lie group extends compatibly to a complex analytic homomorphism between the complex Lie groups. The complexification, which always exists, is unique up to unique isomorphism. Its Lie algebra is a quotient of the complexification of the Lie algebra of the original group. They are isomorphic if the original group has a quotient by a discrete normal subgroup which is linear.
This is a glossary for the terminology in a mathematical field of functional analysis.
