No Arabic abstract
Chu connections and back diagonals are introduced as morphisms for distributors between categories enriched in a small quantaloid $mathcal{Q}$. These notions, meaningful for closed bicategories, dualize the constructions of arrow categories and the Freyd completion of categories. It is shown that, for a small quantaloid $mathcal{Q}$, the category of complete $mathcal{Q}$-categories and left adjoints is a retract of the dual of the category of $mathcal{Q}$-distributors and Chu connections, and it is dually equivalent to the category of $mathcal{Q}$-distributors and back diagonals. As an application of Chu connections, a postulation of the intuitive idea of reduction of formal contexts in the theory of formal concept analysis is presented, and a characterization of reducts of formal contexts is obtained.
Effectus theory is a relatively new approach to categorical logic that can be seen as an abstract form of generalized probabilistic theories (GPTs). While the scalars of a GPT are always the real unit interval [0,1], in an effectus they can form any effect monoid. Hence, there are quite exotic effectuses resulting from more pathological effect monoids. In this paper we introduce sigma-effectuses, where certain countable sums of morphisms are defined. We study in particular sigma-effectuses where unnormalized states can be normalized. We show that a non-trivial sigma-effectus with normalization has as scalars either the two-element effect monoid 0,1 or the real unit interval [0,1]. When states and/or predicates separate the morphisms we find that in the 0,1 case the category must embed into the category of sets and partial functions (and hence the category of Boolean algebras), showing that it implements a deterministic model, while in the [0,1] case we find it embeds into the category of Banach order-unit spaces and of Banach pre-base-norm spaces (satisfying additional properties), recovering the structure present in GPTs. Hence, from abstract categorical and operational considerations we find a dichotomy between deterministic and convex probabilistic models of physical theories.
Cheng, Gurski, and Riehl constructed a cyclic double multicategory of multivariable adjunctions. We show that the same information is carried by a double polycategory, in which opposite categories are polycategorical duals. Moreover, this double polycategory is a full substructure of a double Chu construction, whose objects are a sort of polarized category, and which is a natural home for 2-categorical dualities. We obtain the double Chu construction using a general Chu-Dialectica construction on polycategories, which includes both the Chu construction and the categorical Dialectica construction of de Paiva. The Chu and Dialectica constructions each impose additional hypotheses making the resulting polycategory representable (hence *-autonomous), but for different reasons; this leads to their apparent differences.
Doctrines are categorical structures very apt to study logics of different nature within a unified environment: the 2-category Dtn of doctrines. Modal interior operators are characterised as particular adjoints in the 2-category Dtn. We show that they can be constructed from comonads in Dtn as well as from adjunctions in it, and the two constructions compare. Finally we show the amount of information lost in the passage from a comonad, or from an adjunction, to the modal interior operator. The basis for the present work is provided by some seminal work of John Power.
Monads can be interpreted as encoding formal expressions, or formal operations in the sense of universal algebra. We give a construction which formalizes the idea of evaluating an expression partially: for example, 2+3 can be obtained as a partial evaluation of 2+2+1. This construction can be given for any monad, and it is linked to the famous bar construction, of which it gives an operational interpretation: the bar construction induces a simplicial set, and its 1-cells are partial evaluations. We study the properties of partial evaluations for general monads. We prove that whenever the monad is weakly cartesian, partial evaluations can be composed via the usual Kan filler property of simplicial sets, of which we give an interpretation in terms of substitution of terms. In terms of rewritings, partial evaluations give an abstract reduction system which is reflexive, confluent, and transitive whenever the monad is weakly cartesian. For the case of probability monads, partial evaluations correspond to what probabilists call conditional expectation of random variables. This manuscript is part of a work in progress on a general rewriting interpretation of the bar construction.
We provide new categorical perspectives on Jacobs notion of hypernormalisation of sub-probability distributions. In particular, we show that a suitable general framework for notions of hypernormalisation is that of a symmetric monoidal category endowed with a linear exponential monad---a notion arising in the categorical semantics of Girards linear logic. We show that Jacobs original notion of hypernormalisation arises in this way from the finitely supported probability measure monad on the category of sets, which can be seen as a linear exponential monad with respect to a monoidal structure on sets arising from a quantum-algebraic object which we term the Giry tricocycloid. We give many other examples of hypernormalisation arising from other linear exponential monads.