English

Complete W*-categories

Operator Algebras 2024-11-05 v1 Category Theory

Abstract

We study W\mathrm{W}^*-categories, and explain the ways in which complete W\mathrm{W}^*-categories behave like categorified Hilbert spaces. Every W\mathrm{W}^*-category CC admits a canonical categorified inner product ,Hilb:C×CHilb\langle\,\,,\,\rangle_{\mathrm{Hilb}}\,:\,\overline C\times C\,\to\, \mathrm{Hilb}. Moreover, if CC and DD are complete W\mathrm{W}^*-categories there is an antilinear equivalence :Func(C,D)Func(D,C)\dagger:\mathrm{Func}(C,D) \leftrightarrow \mathrm{Func}(D,C) characterised by c,F(d)HilbF(c),dHilb\langle c,F^\dagger(d)\rangle_{\mathrm{Hilb}} \simeq \langle F(c),d\rangle_{\mathrm{Hilb}}, for cCc\in C and dDd \in D.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2411.01678,
  title  = {Complete W*-categories},
  author = {André Henriques and Nivedita and David Penneys},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2411.01678},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

41 pages; 1 very long table of analogies between Hilbert spaces and complete W*-categories

R2 v1 2026-06-28T19:46:39.851Z