Dual (category theory)

Short description: Correspondence between properties of a category and its opposite

In category theory, a branch of mathematics, duality is a correspondence between the properties of a category C and the dual properties of the opposite category C^op. Given a statement regarding the category C, by interchanging the source and target of each morphism as well as interchanging the order of composing two morphisms, a corresponding dual statement is obtained regarding the opposite category C^op. Duality, as such, is the assertion that truth is invariant under this operation on statements. In other words, if a statement is true about C, then its dual statement is true about C^op. Also, if a statement is false about C, then its dual has to be false about C^op.

Given a concrete category C, it is often the case that the opposite category C^op per se is abstract. C^op need not be a category that arises from mathematical practice. In this case, another category D is also termed to be in duality with C if D and C^op are equivalent as categories.

In the case when C and its opposite C^op are equivalent, such a category is self-dual.^[1]

Formal definition

We define the elementary language of category theory as the two-sorted first order language with objects and morphisms as distinct sorts, together with the relations of an object being the source or target of a morphism and a symbol for composing two morphisms.

Let σ be any statement in this language. We form the dual σ^op as follows:

Interchange each occurrence of "source" in σ with "target".
Interchange the order of composing morphisms. That is, replace each occurrence of [math]\displaystyle{ g \circ f }[/math] with [math]\displaystyle{ f \circ g }[/math]

Informally, these conditions state that the dual of a statement is formed by reversing arrows and compositions.

Duality is the observation that σ is true for some category C if and only if σ^op is true for C^op.^[2]^[3]

Examples

A morphism [math]\displaystyle{ f\colon A \to B }[/math] is a monomorphism if [math]\displaystyle{ f \circ g = f \circ h }[/math] implies [math]\displaystyle{ g=h }[/math]. Performing the dual operation, we get the statement that [math]\displaystyle{ g \circ f = h \circ f }[/math] implies [math]\displaystyle{ g=h. }[/math] For a morphism [math]\displaystyle{ f\colon B \to A }[/math], this is precisely what it means for f to be an epimorphism. In short, the property of being a monomorphism is dual to the property of being an epimorphism.

Applying duality, this means that a morphism in some category C is a monomorphism if and only if the reverse morphism in the opposite category C^op is an epimorphism.

An example comes from reversing the direction of inequalities in a partial order. So if X is a set and ≤ a partial order relation, we can define a new partial order relation ≤_new by

x ≤_new y if and only if y ≤ x.

This example on orders is a special case, since partial orders correspond to a certain kind of category in which Hom(A,B) can have at most one element. In applications to logic, this then looks like a very general description of negation (that is, proofs run in the opposite direction). For example, if we take the opposite of a lattice, we will find that meets and joins have their roles interchanged. This is an abstract form of De Morgan's laws, or of duality applied to lattices.