English

When is the Product isomorphic to the Coproduct

Category Theory 2009-09-29 v1 Quantum Algebra

Abstract

For a category C we investigate the problem of when the coproduct \bigoplus and the product functor \prod from C^I to C are isomorphic for a fixed set I, or, equivalently, when the two functors are Frobenius functors. We show that for an Ab-category C this happens if and only if the set I is finite. Moreover, this is true even in a much more general case, if there is a morphism in C that is invertible with respect to the addition of morphisms. If C does not have this property we give an example to see that the two functors can be isomorphic for infinite sets II. However we show that \bigoplus and \prod are always isomorphic on a suitable subcategory of C^I which is isomorphic to C^I but is not a full subcategory. For the module category case we provide a different proof to display an interesting connection to the notion of Frobenius corings.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.math/0605112,
  title  = {When is the Product isomorphic to the Coproduct},
  author = {Miodrag Cristian Iovanov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/0605112},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

12 pages, to appear in Communications in Algebra

R2 v1 2026-07-22T17:35:21.505Z