English

Cofibrant generation of pure monomorphisms in presheaf categories

Category Theory 2026-04-30 v3 Logic

Abstract

We characterise when the pure monomorphisms in a presheaf category SetC\mathbf{Set}^\mathcal{C} are cofibrantly generated in terms of the category C\mathcal{C}. In particular, when C\mathcal{C} is a monoid SS this characterises cofibrant generation of pure monomorphisms between sets with an SS-action in terms of SS: this happens if and only if for all a,bSa, b \in S there is cSc \in S such that a=cba = cb or ca=bca = b. We give a model-theoretic proof: we prove that our characterisation is equivalent to having a stable independence relation, which in turn is equivalent to cofibrant generation. As a corollary, we show that pure monomorphisms in acts over the multiplicative monoid of natural numbers are not cofibrantly generated.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.2506.20278,
  title  = {Cofibrant generation of pure monomorphisms in presheaf categories},
  author = {Sean Cox and Jonathan Feigert and Mark Kamsma and Marcos Mazari-Armida and Jiří Rosický},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.20278},
  year   = {2026}
}

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26 pages