English

Structures on Categories of Polynomials

Category Theory 2023-05-22 v2

Abstract

We define the monoidal category (PolyE,y,)(Poly_E,y,\triangleleft) of polynomials under composition in any category EE with finite limits, including both cartesian and vertical morphisms of polynomials, and generalize to this setting the Dirichlet tensor product of polynomials \otimes, duoidality of \otimes and \triangleleft, closure of \otimes, and coclosures of \triangleleft. We also prove that \triangleleft-comonoids in PolyEPoly_E are precisely the internal categories in EE whose source morphism is exponentiable, generalizing a result of Ahman-Uustalu equating categories with polynomial comonads, and show that coalgebras in this setting correspond to internal copresheaves. Finally, the double category of ``typed'' polynomials in EE is recovered using \triangleleft-bicomodules in PolyEPoly_E.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2305.00167,
  title  = {Structures on Categories of Polynomials},
  author = {Brandon T. Shapiro and David I. Spivak},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2305.00167},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

50 pages. Additional references added, and minor expository improvements

R2 v1 2026-06-28T10:21:23.360Z