English

A note on the category of equivalence relations

Category Theory 2021-05-21 v1 Logic

Abstract

We make some beginning observations about the category Eq\mathbb{E}\mathrm{q} of equivalence relations on the set of natural numbers, where a morphism between two equivalence relations R,SR,S is a mapping from the set of RR-equivalence classes to that of SS-equivalence classes, which is induced by a computable function. We also consider some full subcategories of Eq\mathbb{E}\mathrm{q}, such as the category Eq(Σ10)\mathbb{E}\mathrm{q}(\Sigma^0_1) of computably enumerable equivalence relations (called ceers), the category Eq(Π10)\mathbb{E}\mathrm{q}(\Pi^0_1) of co-computably enumerable equivalence relations, and the category Eq(Dark)\mathbb{E}\mathrm{q}(\mathrm{Dark}^*) whose objects are the so-called dark ceers plus the ceers with finitely many equivalence classes. Although in all these categories the monomorphisms coincide with the injective morphisms, we show that in Eq(Σ10)\mathbb{E}\mathrm{q}(\Sigma^0_1) the epimorphisms coincide with the onto morphisms, but in Eq(Π10)\mathbb{E}\mathrm{q}(\Pi^0_1) there are epimorphisms that are not onto. Moreover, Eq\mathbb{E}\mathrm{q}, Eq(Σ10)\mathbb{E}\mathrm{q}(\Sigma^0_1), and Eq(Dark)\mathbb{E}\mathrm{q}(\mathrm{Dark}^*) are closed under finite products, binary coproducts, and coequalizers, but we give an example of two morphisms in Eq(Π10)\mathbb{E}\mathrm{q}(\Pi^0_1) whose coequalizer in Eq\mathbb{E}\mathrm{q} is not an object of Eq(Π10)\mathbb{E}\mathrm{q}(\Pi^0_1).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2105.09604,
  title  = {A note on the category of equivalence relations},
  author = {Valentino Delle Rose and Luca San Mauro and Andrea Sorbi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.09604},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

14 pages, forthcoming in Algebra and Logic