In category theory, the concept of epimorphism is a generalization or strengthening of the concept of surjective functions between sets (example below).
The formally dual concept is that of monomorphism, similarly related to the concept of injective function.
Common jargon includes “is a mono” or “is monic” for “is a monomorphism”, and “is an epi” or “is epic” for “is an epimorphism”, and “is an iso” for “is an isomorphism”.
A morphism in some category is called an epimorphism (sometimes abbrieviated to epi, or described as being epic), if for every object and every pair of parallel morphisms then
Stated more abstractly, this says that is an epimorphism precisely if for every object the hom-functor sends it to an injective function
between hom-sets. Since injective functions are the monomorphisms in Set (example below) this means that is an epimorphism precisely if is a monomorphism for all .
Finally, this means that is an epimorphism in a category precisely if it is a monomorphism in the opposite category .
(epimorphisms of sets)
The epimorphisms in the category Set of sets are precisely the surjective functions.
Thus the concept of epimorphism may be thought of as a category-theoretic generalization of the concept of surjection.
But beware that in categories of sets with extra structure, epimorphisms need not be surjective (in contrast to monomorphisms, which are usually injective).
(epimorphisms of sheaves)
A morphism in the category of sheaves of sets over a topological space is epimorphism iff the induced map on the level of each stalk is surjective. See also math.stackexchange here.
(epimorphisms of rings)
In the categories Ring or CRing of (commutative) rings and ring homomorphisms between them, a morphism is epi iff the canonical inclusion of the right module into its extension of scalars along , is a bijection (hence isomorphism), or equivalently, the multiplication map factors to an isomorphism of -bimodules.
It follows that the multiplication induces natural isomorphism of endofunctors with components . While the extension of scalars followed by restriction of scalars is a monad (by adjunction), this implies that it is an idempotent monad, hence the extension of scalars is a localization functor.
In both categories, every surjective ring homomorphism is an epimorphism, however there are many epimorphisms which are not surjective maps. For example, the inclusion is an epimorphism of rings, and of commutative rings. More generally, every flat localization of rings (e.g. Ore localization) is a flat epimorphism, but (nontrivial) localizations are not surjective.
Any faithfully flat epimorphism of rings is an isomorphism.
An epimorphism of commutative rings is surjective iff it is a finite morphism. For epimorphisms of commutative rings see Stacks Project, 10.106 Epimorphisms of rings and MathOverflow what-do-epimorphisms-of-commutative-rings-look-like.
Often, though, the surjections correspond to a stronger notion of epimorphism.
Every isomorphism is both an epimorphism and a monomorphism.
But beware that the converse fails:
The following lists some examples of morphisms that are both monomorphisms and epimorphisms, but not necessarily isomorphisms.
In the category of Hausdorff topological spaces, the inclusion of a dense subspace is an epimorphism.
See this Prop. for proof.
In unital Rings, the canonical inclusion of the integers into the rational numbers is an epimorphism.
See this Prop. for proof.
The following are equivalent:
is an epimorphism in ;
is a monomorphism in the opposite category ;
precomposition with is a monomorphism in Set: that is, for all , is an injection;
is a pushout diagram.
If and are epimorphisms, so is their composite . If is an epimorphism, so is .
The converse of the above proposition fails, and an epimorphism is called a regular epimorphism if it is the coequalizer of some pair of morphisms.
Epimorphisms are preserved by pushout: if is an epimorphism and
is a pushout diagram, then also is an epimorphism.
Let be two morphisms such that . Then by the commutativity of the diagram also equals . Since is assumed to be epi, it follows that equals . But this means that and define the same cocone. By the universality of the pushout there is a unique map of cocones from to . Hence must equal . Therefore is epi.
Epimorphisms are preserved by any left adjoint functor, or more generally any functor that preserves pushouts: if is a functor that preserves pushouts and an epimorphism then is an epimorphism.
If is a left adjoint we can argue this way: by the adjunction natural isomorphism we have for all
The right hand is a monomorphism by assumption, hence so is the left hand, hence is epi.
More generally, if preserves pushouts we can use the fact that is epic iff
is a pushout diagram.
Epimorphisms are reflected by faithful functors.
Let be a faithful functor. Consider a morphism in such that is an epimorphism in . We need to show that then itself is an epimorphism.
So consider morphisms such that . We need to show that this implies that already (injectivity of ). But functoriality implies that , and since is epic this implies that . Now the statement follows with the assumption that is faithful, hence injective on morphisms.
Epimorphisms get along with colimits in a number of ways, some of which we have seen above. Here is another:
Any morphism to an initial object is an epimorphism.
The coproduct of epimorphisms is an epimorphism.
For the first suppose is initial and . Given morphisms with we have simply because is initial.
For the second suppose and are epimorphisms; we wish to show that is an epimorphism. Suppose we have morphisms with . Then where is the canonical map into the coproduct. Since is epic we conclude . Similarly we have . It follows that .
Epimorphisms do not get along quite as well with limits. For example, the projections from a Cartesian product onto its factors, e.g. , are not always epimorphisms (even in : take to be empty).
There are a sequence of variations on the concept of epimorphism, which conveniently arrange themselves in a total order. In order from strongest to weakest, we have:
In the category of sets, every epimorphism is effective descent (and even split if you believe the axiom of choice). Thus, it can be hard to know, when generalising concepts from Set to other categories, what kind of epimorphism to use. The following discussion may be helpful in this regard.
First we note:
Moreover, if the category has finite limits, then the picture becomes much simpler:
If a strict epimorphism has a kernel pair, then it is effective and hence also regular. Thus, in a category with pullbacks, effective = regular = strict. Probably for this reason, there is substantial variation among authors in their use of these words; some use “effective epi” or “regular epi” to mean what we have called a “strict epi”.
Likewise, in a category with pullbacks, every extremal epimorphism is strong, since monomorphisms are always pullback-stable.
Moreover, in a category with equalizers, strong and extremal epimorphisms do not need to explicitly be asserted to be epic; that follows from the other condition in their definition.
Also worth noting are:
In a regular category, every extremal epimorphism is a descent morphism (i.e. a pullback-stable regular epimorphism). Thus in this case there remain only four types of epimorphism: split, effective descent, regular, and plain.
In an exact category, or a category that has pullback-stable reflexive coequalizers (which implies that it is regular), any regular epimorphism is effective descent. Thus in this case we have only three types: split, regular, and plain.
In a pretopos (hence also in a topos), every epimorphism is regular, leaving only two types: split and plain. The collapsing of these two types into one is called the axiom of choice for that category.
Thus, in general, the two serious distinctions come
Between split epimorphisms and regular ones: in very few categories are all regular epimorphisms split. Splitting of even regular epimorphisms is a form of the axiom of choice, which may be valid in Set (if you believe it) but very often fails internally.
Between extremal epimorphisms and “plain” epimorphisms: in many categories, the plain epimorphisms are oddly behaved, but the extremal ones are what we would expect. For instance, the inclusion is an epimorphism of rings, but the extremal epimorphisms of rings are just the surjective ring homomorphisms. More generally, in all algebraic categories (categories of algebra for a Lawvere theory), which are regular, the regular epimorphisms are the morphisms whose underlying function is surjective.
Moreover, even in non-regular categories, there seems to be a strong tendency for strong/extremal epimorphisms to coincide with regular/strict ones. For example, this is the case in Top, where both are the class of quotient maps. (The plain epimorphisms are the surjective continuous functions.)
However, the distinction is real. For instance, in the category generated by the following graph:
subject to the equations and , both and are strong, but not strict, epimorphisms.
Textbook accounts:
Saunders MacLane, §I.5 of: Categories for the Working Mathematician, Graduate Texts in Mathematics 5 Springer (1971, second ed. 1997) [doi:10.1007/978-1-4757-4721-8]
Francis Borceux, Section 1.8 in: Handbook of Categorical Algebra Vol. 1: Basic Category Theory [doi:10.1017/CBO9780511525858]
See also:
Last revised on August 4, 2024 at 08:19:56. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.