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Local cartesian closedness in the category of compactly generated spaces

According the the nLab, the category of compactly generated (CG) spaces is not locally cartesian closed. So if $A$ is a CG space and $C$ a CG space above $A$, $C$ may not be exponentiable. What if we ...
Guillaume Brunerie's user avatar
70 votes
28 answers
7k views

Examples where it's useful to know that a mathematical object belongs to some family of objects

For an expository piece I'm writing, it would be useful to have good examples of the following phenomenon: (1) ${\cal X}$ is a parameterized family of somethings. (Varieties, schemes, manifolds, ...
2 votes
0 answers
512 views

Direct Limits and Limits of Nets

A net is a function from a directed set into a topological space, and it is said to converge to a point if certain conditions are satisfied. Similarly, a direct system is a function from a directed ...
David Corwin's user avatar
  • 14.9k
5 votes
2 answers
688 views

A subcategory of top where subspaces and subobjects coincide?

I think that my question is easily answerable. The question is: What is a nice subcategory of topological spaces where the subobjects are subspaces. I would like the category of compactly generated ...
Spice the Bird's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
242 views

Induced pretopologies on sSet

Recall that the geometric realisation functor $| - |: sSet \to Top$ preserves products (choosing $Top = k Space$ or similar). Thus any given singleton Grothendieck pretopology on $Top$ gives rise to a ...
David Roberts's user avatar
  • 33.2k
6 votes
2 answers
550 views

Automorphism groups and etale topological stacks

Recall that an etale topological stack is a stack $\mathscr{X}$ over the category of topological spaces (and open covers) which admits a representable local homeomorphism $X \to \mathscr{X}$ from a ...
David Carchedi's user avatar
14 votes
4 answers
1k views

Localic locales? Towards very pointless spaces by iterated internalization.

One can think of locales as (generalizations of) topological spaces which don't necessary have (enough) points. Of course when one studies locales, one "actually" studies frames, certain sorts of ...
David Feldman's user avatar
7 votes
0 answers
308 views

The self-duality of topological compactness

The impatient reader can skip my attempt at motivation and go straight my "Question formulations for the impatient." In a failed(?) attempt at discovering something new, some years ago I ...
David Feldman's user avatar
37 votes
5 answers
5k views

Locales and Topology.

As someone more used to point-set topology, who is unfamiliar with the inner workings of lattice theory, I am looking to learn about the localic interpretation of topology, of which I only have a ...
6 votes
4 answers
1k views

On locally convex (and compactly generated) topological vector spaces

Part 1: How big is the category $TVS_{loc.conv.}$ of locally convex topological vector spaces (and continuous maps)? In other words (and less cheekily), is there a free locally convex TVS having any ...
David Roberts's user avatar
  • 33.2k
38 votes
3 answers
5k views

Why are profinite topologies important?

I hope this is not too vague of a question. Stone duality implies that the category Pro(FinSet) is equivalent to the category of Stone spaces (compact, Hausdorff, totally disconnected, topological ...
Mike Shulman's user avatar
  • 64.1k
16 votes
1 answer
552 views

Do strict pro-sets embed in locales?

It is well-known that the category of profinite groups (by which I mean Pro(FiniteGroups), i.e. the category of formal cofiltered limits of finite groups) is equivalent to a full subcategory of ...
Mike Shulman's user avatar
  • 64.1k
16 votes
5 answers
2k views

What abstract nonsense is necessary to say the word "submersion"?

This question is closely related to these two, but the former doesn't go far enough and the latter didn't attract much attention, and anyway I want to ask the question slightly differently. Recall ...
Theo Johnson-Freyd's user avatar
9 votes
3 answers
3k views

compact-open topology

Is there a natural reason for defining the compact-open topology on the set of continuous functions between two locally compact spaces. For example "to make ... functions continuous". Or in another ...
safak's user avatar
  • 287
11 votes
9 answers
1k views

Proving the impossibility of an embedding of categories

A number of topological invariants take the form of functors $\mathscr{T}\to\mathscr{G}$, where $\mathscr{T}$ is the category of all topological spaces and continuous functions, and $\mathscr{G}$ is ...
Daniel Miller's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
2k views

How is the right adjoint $f_*$ to the inverse image functor $f^*$ described for functor categories $Set^C$, $Set^D$ and $f : C \to D$

For $C,D$ small categories, and $f : C \to D$ a functor between them, there is a precomposition, or "inverse image", functor $f^* = (-) \circ f : Set^D \to Set^C$. It has a left and a right adjoint. ...
vincenzoml's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
569 views

Functoriality of base change

Let $a:W\rightarrow X$, $c:X\rightarrow Z$, $b:W\rightarrow Y$ and $d:Y\rightarrow Z$ be a pull-back diagram in the category of topological spaces. Then one can construct a natural isomorphism $\kappa$...
JJH's user avatar
  • 1,447
10 votes
1 answer
890 views

Category Theory / Topology Question

Let me begin by noting that I know quite little about category theory. So forgive me if the title is too vague, if the question is trivial, and if the question is written poorly. Let $\mathcal{C}$ ...
Paul Siegel's user avatar
  • 28.5k
5 votes
2 answers
601 views

How do you know when a reflective subcategory of Top is quotient-reflective?

A subcategory $\mathcal{C}$ of the category $Top$ of topological spaces is a reflective subcategory if the inclusion functor $i:\mathcal{C}\hookrightarrow Top$ has a left adjoint $R:Top\rightarrow \...
Jeremy Brazas's user avatar
21 votes
1 answer
813 views

Is there a category of topological spaces such that open surjections admit local sections?

The class of open surjections $Q \to X$ is a Grothendieck pretopology on the category $Top$ of spaces, and includes the class of maps $\amalg U_\alpha \to X$ where $\{U_\alpha\}$ is an open cover of $...
David Roberts's user avatar
  • 33.2k
15 votes
5 answers
670 views

How can one characterise compactness-by-experiment?

There are a myriad different variations on the theme of "compactness", and some of them have even made it on to Wikipedia. I'm interested in finding out more about types of compactness that fit the ...
Andrew Stacey's user avatar
16 votes
5 answers
4k views

Why are inverse images more important than images in mathematics?

Why are inverse images of functions more central to mathematics than the image? I have a sequence of related questions: Why the fixation on continuous maps as opposed to open maps? (Is there an ...
3 votes
1 answer
785 views

When is the realization of a simplicial space compact ?

Suppose $X$ is a simplicial space of dimension $M$ (i.e. all simplices above dimension $M$ are degenerate). The claim is: $|X|$ is compact. iff $X_n$ is compact for each $n$. Suppose each $X_n$ is ...
HenrikRüping's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
213 views

Is the realization of a proper map of simplicial spaces proper ?

Let $f:X \rightarrow Y$ be a map of $m$-dimensional simplicial spaces (which means that all simplices above dimension $m$ are degenerate). Recall, that $f$ is a natural transformation of functors from ...
HenrikRüping's user avatar
21 votes
2 answers
2k views

Colimits in the category of smooth manifolds

In the category of smooth real manifolds, do all small colimits exist? In other words, is this category small-cocomplete? I can see that computing push-outs in the category of topological spaces of ...
Glen M Wilson's user avatar
11 votes
5 answers
1k views

Confusion over a point in basic category theory

"Let Top be the category of topological spaces." If I see a definition like this, in which homeomorphic (isomorphic in the category) spaces are not identified together, then for each given topological ...
Cary's user avatar
  • 1,197
4 votes
1 answer
402 views

"Category" of Nonempty Metric Spaces and Contractive Maps?

The usual way of getting a category of metric spaces is to take metric spaces as objects, and the nonexpansive maps (ie, functions $f : A \to B$ such that $d_B(f(a), f(a')) \leq d_A(a, a')$) as ...
Neel Krishnaswami's user avatar
13 votes
1 answer
737 views

Is Top_4 (normal spaces) a reflective subcategory of Top_3 (regular spaces)?

I’m studying some category theory by reading Mac Lane linearly and solving exercises. In question 5.9.4 of the second edition, the reader is asked to construct left adjoints for each of the inclusion ...
user2734's user avatar
  • 1,371
14 votes
3 answers
1k views

What is a monoidal metric space?

At time of writing, the highest rated answer to my question What is a metric space? is Tom Leinster's account of Lawvere's description of a metric space as an enriched category. This prompted my ...
Andrew Stacey's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
356 views

Is the coproduct of fibrant spectra fibrant again?

Define an $S^{1}$-spectrum $E$ to be a sequence of pointed simplicial sets $E_{n},\\ n=0,1,2...$ with assembly morphisms $\sigma_{n}:S^{1}\wedge E_{n}\rightarrow E_{n+1}$. An $S^{1}$-spectrum $E$ is ...
Luis 's user avatar
  • 51
42 votes
8 answers
5k views

What is a metric space?

According to categorical lore, objects in a category are just a way of separating morphisms. The objects themselves are considered slightly disparagingly. In particular, if I can't distinguish ...
Andrew Stacey's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
576 views

Base change for category objects in topological spaces

I was prompted by this question, but the motivation is different. Suppose we have an internal category object in topological spaces, i.e. an object space X and a morphism space Y, together with ...
Tyler Lawson's user avatar
  • 50.6k
16 votes
10 answers
3k views

References for homotopy colimit

(1) What are some good references for homotopy colimits? (2) Where can I find a reference for the following concrete construction of a homotopy colimit? Start with a partial ordering, which I will ...
Kevin Walker's user avatar
  • 12.2k

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