This page consider the very general concept of embeddings. For the special cases traditionally considered see at embedding of topological spaces or embedding of smooth manifolds.
An embedding is, generally, a morphism which in some sense is an isomorphism onto its image
For this to make sense in a given category , we not only need a good notion of image. Note that it is not enough to have the image of as a subobject of ; we also need to be able to interpret as a morphism from to , because it is this morphism that we are asking to be an isomorphism.
One general abstract way to define an embedding morphism is to say that this is equivalently a regular monomorphism.
If the ambient category has finite limits and colimits, then this is equivalently an effective monomorphism. In terms of this we recover a formalization of the above idea, that an embedding is an iso onto its image :
For a morphism in the definition of image as an equalizer says that the image of is
In particular we have a factorization of as
where the morphism on the right is a monomorphism.
The morphism being an effective monomorphism means that is an isomorphism, hence that is an “isomomorphism onto its image”.
Let . Then is an embedding if for every the function is an equivalence.
A morphism of topological spaces is a regular monomorphism precisely if this is an injection such that the topology on is the induced topology. This is an embedding of topological spaces.
Last revised on October 25, 2017 at 15:15:39. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.