Related papers: Associativity as Commutativity
It is shown that all the assumptions for symmetric monoidal categories flow out of a unifying principle involving natural isomorphisms of the type ${(A\otimes B)\otimes(C\otimes D)\to(A\otimes C)\otimes(B\otimes D)}$, called medial…
The usual coherence theorem of MacLane for categories with multiplication assumes that a certain pentagonal diagram commutes in order to conclude that associativity isomorphisms are well defined in a certain practical sense. The practical…
Coherence phenomena appear in two different situations. In the context of category theory the term `coherence constraints' refers to a set of diagrams whose commutativity implies the commutativity of a larger class of diagrams. In the…
A premonoidal category is equipped only with a bifunctor and a natural isomorphism for associativity. We introduce a (deformation) natural automorphism representing the deviation from the Pentagon condition. We uncover a binary tree…
We study what happens when coherence fails. Categories with a tensor product and a natural associativity isomorphism that does not necessarily satisfy the pentagon coherence requirements (called associative categories) are considered.…
It is proved that MacLane's coherence results for monoidal and symmetric monoidal categories can be extended to some other categories with multiplication; namely, to relevant, affine and cartesian categories. All results are formulated in…
A concrete computation -- twelve slidings with sixteen tiles -- reveals that certain commutativity phenomena occur in every double semigroup. This can be seen as a sort of Eckmann-Hilton argument, but it does not use units. The result…
We propose to extend ``invertibility'' to ``regularity'' for categories in general abstract algebraic manner. Higher regularity conditions and ``semicommutative'' diagrams are introduced. Distinction between commutative and…
An equivalent description of a symmetric monoidal category is introduced in which, instead of separate associator and commutator isomorphisms satisfying the usual coherence axioms, we simply have associo-commutator isomorphisms satisfying…
We give an alternative presentation of braided monoidal categories. Instead of the usual associativity and braiding we have just one constraint (the b-structure). In the unital case, the coherence conditions for a b-structure are shown to…
We establish a formal correspondence between resource calculi an appropriate linear multicategories. We consider the cases of (symmetric) representable, symmetric closed and autonomous multicategories. For all these structures, we prove…
Let $\mathcal{S}$ be a small category admitting binary products. We show that the whole theory of monoidal $\mathcal{S}$-fibered categories, which is customarily formulated in terms of the usual internal tensor product, can be rephrased…
Coherence theorems for covariant structures carried by a category have traditionally relied on the underlying term rewriting system of the structure being terminating and confluent. While this holds in a variety of cases, it is not a…
Given a category with a bifunctor and natural isomorphisms for associativity, commutativity and left and right identity we do not assume that extra constraining diagrams hold. We introduce groupoids of coupling trees to describe a version…
Proofs of coherence in category theory, starting from Mac Lane's original proof of coherence for monoidal categories, are sometimes based on confluence techniques analogous to what one finds in the lambda calculus, or in term-rewriting…
A symmetric monoidal category is a category equipped with an associative and commutative (binary) product and an object which is the unit for the product. In fact, those properties only hold up to natural isomorphisms which satisfy some…
To characterize categorical constraints - associativity, commutativity and monoidality - in the context of quasimonoidal categories, from a cohomological point of view, we define the notion of a parity (quasi)complex. Applied to groups…
We define weak units in a semi-monoidal 2-category $\CC$ as cancellable pseudo-idempotents: they are pairs $(I,\alpha)$ where $I$ is an object such that tensoring with $I$ from either side constitutes a biequivalence of $\CC$, and $\alpha:…
We develop formulas that define permutahedral commutation coherence relations of all orders. To illustrate the result geometrically, we begin by defining a rigid transformation of the $(n+1)$-permutahedron into a $n$-cube of dimensions $1…
Coherence theorems are fundamental to how we think about monoidal categories and their generalizations. In this paper we revisit Mac Lane's original proof of coherence for monoidal categories using the Grothendieck construction. This…