In category theory

Category theory

Category theory is an area of study in mathematics that examines in an abstract way the properties of particular mathematical concepts, by formalising them as collections of objects and arrows , where these collections satisfy certain basic conditions...

, a monoid (or monoid object) in a monoidal category

Monoidal category

In mathematics, a monoidal category is a category C equipped with a bifunctorwhich is associative, up to a natural isomorphism, and an object I which is both a left and right identity for ⊗, again up to a natural isomorphism...

  is an object M together with two morphism

Morphism

In mathematics, a morphism is an abstraction derived from structure-preserving mappings between two mathematical structures. The notion of morphism recurs in much of contemporary mathematics...

s

• called multiplication,
• and called unit,

such that the diagrams

and

commute. In the above notations, I is the unit element and , and are respectively the associativity, the left identity and the right identity of the monoidal category C.

Dually, a comonoid in a monoidal category C is a monoid in the dual category .

Suppose that the monoidal category C has a symmetry . A monoid in C is symmetric when.

Examples

• A monoid object in Set
  Category of sets
  In the mathematical field of category theory, the category of sets, denoted as Set, is the category whose objects are sets. The arrows or morphisms between sets A and B are all functions from A to B...
  
  (with the monoidal structure induced by the cartesian product) is a monoid
  Monoid
  In abstract algebra, a branch of mathematics, a monoid is an algebraic structure with a single associative binary operation and an identity element. Monoids are studied in semigroup theory as they are naturally semigroups with identity. Monoids occur in several branches of mathematics; for...
  
   in the usual sense.
• A monoid object in Top
  Category of topological spaces
  In mathematics, the category of topological spaces, often denoted Top, is the category whose objects are topological spaces and whose morphisms are continuous maps. This is a category because the composition of two continuous maps is again continuous...
  
  (with the monoidal structure induced by the product topology
  Product topology
  In topology and related areas of mathematics, a product space is the cartesian product of a family of topological spaces equipped with a natural topology called the product topology...
  
  ) is a topological monoid.
• A monoid object in the category of monoids (with the direct product of monoids) is just a commutative monoid. This follows easily from the Eckmann–Hilton theorem.
• A monoid object in the category of complete join-semilattices Sup (with the monoidal structure induced by the cartesian product) is a unital quantale
  Quantale
  In mathematics, quantales are certain partially ordered algebraic structures that generalize locales as well as various multiplicative lattices of ideals from ring theory and functional analysis...
  
  .
• A monoid object in (Ab
  Category of abelian groups
  In mathematics, the category Ab has the abelian groups as objects and group homomorphisms as morphisms. This is the prototype of an abelian category....
  
  , ⊗_Z, Z) is a ring
  Ring (mathematics)
  In mathematics, a ring is an algebraic structure consisting of a set together with two binary operations usually called addition and multiplication, where the set is an abelian group under addition and a semigroup under multiplication such that multiplication distributes over addition...
  
  .
• For a commutative ring R, a monoid object in (R-Mod, ⊗R, R) is an R-algebra.
• A monoid object in K-Vect
  Category of vector spaces
  In mathematics, especially category theory, the category K-Vect has all vector spaces over a fixed field K as objects and K-linear transformations as morphisms...
  
   (again, with the tensor product) is a K-algebra
  Algebra over a field
  In mathematics, an algebra over a field is a vector space equipped with a bilinear vector product. That is to say, it isan algebraic structure consisting of a vector space together with an operation, usually called multiplication, that combines any two vectors to form a third vector; to qualify as...
  
  , a comonoid object is a K-coalgebra
  Coalgebra
  In mathematics, coalgebras or cogebras are structures that are dual to unital associative algebras. The axioms of unital associative algebras can be formulated in terms of commutative diagrams...
  
  .
• For any category C, the category [C,C] of its endofunctors has a monoidal structure induced by the composition. A monoid object in [C,C] is a monad
  Monad (category theory)
  In category theory, a branch of mathematics, a monad, Kleisli triple, or triple is an functor, together with two natural transformations...
  
   on C.

Categories of monoids

Given two monoids and in a monoidal category C, a morphism is a morphism of monoids when

• ,
• .

The category of monoids in C and their monoid morphisms is written .

See also

• monoid
  Monoid
  In abstract algebra, a branch of mathematics, a monoid is an algebraic structure with a single associative binary operation and an identity element. Monoids are studied in semigroup theory as they are naturally semigroups with identity. Monoids occur in several branches of mathematics; for...
  
   (non-categorical definition)
• Act-S, the category of monoids acting on sets