Natural transformationIn , a branch of mathematics, a natural transformation provides a way of transforming one functor into another while respecting the internal structure (i.e., the composition of morphisms) of the involved. Hence, a natural transformation can be considered to be a "morphism of functors". Informally, the notion of a natural transformation states that a particular map between functors can be done consistently over an entire category. Indeed, this intuition can be formalized to define so-called .
IsomorphismIn mathematics, an isomorphism is a structure-preserving mapping between two structures of the same type that can be reversed by an inverse mapping. Two mathematical structures are isomorphic if an isomorphism exists between them. The word isomorphism is derived from the Ancient Greek: ἴσος isos "equal", and μορφή morphe "form" or "shape". The interest in isomorphisms lies in the fact that two isomorphic objects have the same properties (excluding further information such as additional structure or names of objects).
Group theoryIn abstract algebra, group theory studies the algebraic structures known as groups. The concept of a group is central to abstract algebra: other well-known algebraic structures, such as rings, fields, and vector spaces, can all be seen as groups endowed with additional operations and axioms. Groups recur throughout mathematics, and the methods of group theory have influenced many parts of algebra. Linear algebraic groups and Lie groups are two branches of group theory that have experienced advances and have become subject areas in their own right.
Adjoint functorsIn mathematics, specifically , adjunction is a relationship that two functors may exhibit, intuitively corresponding to a weak form of equivalence between two related categories. Two functors that stand in this relationship are known as adjoint functors, one being the left adjoint and the other the right adjoint. Pairs of adjoint functors are ubiquitous in mathematics and often arise from constructions of "optimal solutions" to certain problems (i.e.
Tensor-hom adjunctionIn mathematics, the tensor-hom adjunction is that the tensor product and hom-functor form an adjoint pair: This is made more precise below. The order of terms in the phrase "tensor-hom adjunction" reflects their relationship: tensor is the left adjoint, while hom is the right adjoint. Say R and S are (possibly noncommutative) rings, and consider the right module categories (an analogous statement holds for left modules): Fix an -bimodule and define functors and as follows: Then is left adjoint to .
Isomorphism theoremsIn mathematics, specifically abstract algebra, the isomorphism theorems (also known as Noether's isomorphism theorems) are theorems that describe the relationship between quotients, homomorphisms, and subobjects. Versions of the theorems exist for groups, rings, vector spaces, modules, Lie algebras, and various other algebraic structures. In universal algebra, the isomorphism theorems can be generalized to the context of algebras and congruences.
Geometric group theoryGeometric group theory is an area in mathematics devoted to the study of finitely generated groups via exploring the connections between algebraic properties of such groups and topological and geometric properties of spaces on which these groups act (that is, when the groups in question are realized as geometric symmetries or continuous transformations of some spaces). Another important idea in geometric group theory is to consider finitely generated groups themselves as geometric objects.
Group (mathematics)In mathematics, a group is a non-empty set with an operation that satisfies the following constraints: the operation is associative, has an identity element, and every element of the set has an inverse element. Many mathematical structures are groups endowed with other properties. For example, the integers with the addition operation is an infinite group, which is generated by a single element called 1 (these properties characterize the integers in a unique way).
Category of small categoriesIn mathematics, specifically in , the category of small categories, denoted by Cat, is the whose objects are all and whose morphisms are functors between categories. Cat may actually be regarded as a with natural transformations serving as 2-morphisms. The initial object of Cat is the empty category 0, which is the category of no objects and no morphisms. The terminal object is the terminal category or trivial category 1 with a single object and morphism. The category Cat is itself a , and therefore not an object of itself.
Order isomorphismIn the mathematical field of order theory, an order isomorphism is a special kind of monotone function that constitutes a suitable notion of isomorphism for partially ordered sets (posets). Whenever two posets are order isomorphic, they can be considered to be "essentially the same" in the sense that either of the orders can be obtained from the other just by renaming of elements. Two strictly weaker notions that relate to order isomorphisms are order embeddings and Galois connections.
Equivalence of categoriesIn , a branch of abstract mathematics, an equivalence of categories is a relation between two that establishes that these categories are "essentially the same". There are numerous examples of categorical equivalences from many areas of mathematics. Establishing an equivalence involves demonstrating strong similarities between the mathematical structures concerned.
Group isomorphismIn abstract algebra, a group isomorphism is a function between two groups that sets up a one-to-one correspondence between the elements of the groups in a way that respects the given group operations. If there exists an isomorphism between two groups, then the groups are called isomorphic. From the standpoint of group theory, isomorphic groups have the same properties and need not be distinguished.
Monad (category theory)In , a branch of mathematics, a monad (also triple, triad, standard construction and fundamental construction) is a in the of endofunctors of some fixed category. An endofunctor is a functor mapping a category to itself, and a monad is an endofunctor together with two natural transformations required to fulfill certain coherence conditions. Monads are used in the theory of pairs of adjoint functors, and they generalize closure operators on partially ordered sets to arbitrary categories.
Group representationIn the mathematical field of representation theory, group representations describe abstract groups in terms of bijective linear transformations of a vector space to itself (i.e. vector space automorphisms); in particular, they can be used to represent group elements as invertible matrices so that the group operation can be represented by matrix multiplication. In chemistry, a group representation can relate mathematical group elements to symmetric rotations and reflections of molecules.
Graph isomorphismIn graph theory, an isomorphism of graphs G and H is a bijection between the vertex sets of G and H such that any two vertices u and v of G are adjacent in G if and only if and are adjacent in H. This kind of bijection is commonly described as "edge-preserving bijection", in accordance with the general notion of isomorphism being a structure-preserving bijection. If an isomorphism exists between two graphs, then the graphs are called isomorphic and denoted as . In the case when the bijection is a mapping of a graph onto itself, i.
Triangular matrixIn mathematics, a triangular matrix is a special kind of square matrix. A square matrix is called if all the entries above the main diagonal are zero. Similarly, a square matrix is called if all the entries below the main diagonal are zero. Because matrix equations with triangular matrices are easier to solve, they are very important in numerical analysis. By the LU decomposition algorithm, an invertible matrix may be written as the product of a lower triangular matrix L and an upper triangular matrix U if and only if all its leading principal minors are non-zero.
Subgraph isomorphism problemIn theoretical computer science, the subgraph isomorphism problem is a computational task in which two graphs G and H are given as input, and one must determine whether G contains a subgraph that is isomorphic to H. Subgraph isomorphism is a generalization of both the maximum clique problem and the problem of testing whether a graph contains a Hamiltonian cycle, and is therefore NP-complete. However certain other cases of subgraph isomorphism may be solved in polynomial time.
Higher category theoryIn mathematics, higher category theory is the part of at a higher order, which means that some equalities are replaced by explicit arrows in order to be able to explicitly study the structure behind those equalities. Higher category theory is often applied in algebraic topology (especially in homotopy theory), where one studies algebraic invariants of spaces, such as their fundamental . An ordinary has and morphisms, which are called 1-morphisms in the context of higher category theory.
Schur decompositionIn the mathematical discipline of linear algebra, the Schur decomposition or Schur triangulation, named after Issai Schur, is a matrix decomposition. It allows one to write an arbitrary complex square matrix as unitarily equivalent to an upper triangular matrix whose diagonal elements are the eigenvalues of the original matrix. The Schur decomposition reads as follows: if A is an n × n square matrix with complex entries, then A can be expressed as where Q is a unitary matrix (so that its inverse Q−1 is also the conjugate transpose Q* of Q), and U is an upper triangular matrix, which is called a Schur form of A.
Category of modulesIn algebra, given a ring R, the category of left modules over R is the whose are all left modules over R and whose morphisms are all module homomorphisms between left R-modules. For example, when R is the ring of integers Z, it is the same thing as the . The category of right modules is defined in a similar way. One can also define the category of bimodules over a ring R but that category is equivalent to the category of left (or right) modules over the enveloping algebra of R (or over the opposite of that).