Frobenius objects in the category of spans
Category Theory
2022-12-07 v2 Mathematical Physics
Algebraic Topology
math.MP
Abstract
We consider Frobenius objects in the category Span, where the objects are sets and the morphisms are isomorphism classes of spans of sets. We show that such structures are in correspondence with data that can be characterized in terms of simplicial sets. An interesting class of examples comes from groupoids. Our primary motivation is that Span can be viewed as a set-theoretic model for the symplectic category, and thus Frobenius objects in Span provide set-theoretic models for classical topological field theories. The paper includes an explanation of this relationship.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2106.14743,
title = {Frobenius objects in the category of spans},
author = {Ivan Contreras and Molly Keller and Rajan Amit Mehta},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2106.14743},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
v2: added sections 3.5 and 4.5, explaining the relationship to 2-Segal sets