The slice category or over category of a category over an object has
objects that are all arrows such that , and
morphisms from to such that .
The slice category is a special case of a comma category.
There is a forgetful functor which maps an object to its domain and a morphism (from to such that ) to the morphism .
The dual notion is an under category.
If is a poset and , then the slice category is the down set of elements with .
If is a terminal object in , then is isomorphic to .
For a topological space then the category of covering spaces over is a full subcategory of the slice category of the category of topological spaces.
The fundamental theorem of topos theory states that the slice category over any object in a topos is itself a topos.
For a monoidal category the slice category over any monoid object is monoidal.
For instance, the slice topos of a given topos over any monoid object is canonically a monoidal topos (see the Example there).
If admits binary coproducts with the fixed object , then the forgetful functor is comonadic. See coreader comonad for more details.
The assignment of overcategories to objects extends to a functor
Under the Grothendieck construction this functor corresponds to the codomain fibration
from the arrow category of . (Note that unless has pullbacks, this functor is not actually a fibration, though it is always an opfibration.)
(sliced adjoints)
Let
be a pair of adjoint functors (adjoint ∞-functors), where the category (∞-category) has all pullbacks (homotopy pullbacks).
Then:
For every object there is induced a pair of adjoint functors between the slice categories (slice ∞-categories) of the form
where:
For every object there is induced a pair of adjoint functors between the slice categories of the form
where:
is the evident induced functor (applying to the entire triangle diagrams in which represent the morphisms in );
is the composite
of
the evident functor induced by ;
the composition with the -counit at (i.e. the left base change along ).
(in 1-category theory)
Recall that (this Prop.) the hom-isomorphism that defines an adjunction of functors (this Def.) is equivalently given in terms of composition with
the adjunction unit
as follows:
Using this, consider the following transformations of morphisms in slice categories, for the first case:
(1a)
(2a)
(2b)
(1b)
Here:
(1a) and (1b) are equivalent expressions of the same morphism in , by (at the top of the diagrams) the above expression of adjuncts between and and (at the bottom) by the triangle identity.
(2a) and (2b) are equivalent expression of the same morphism in , by the universal property of the pullback.
Hence:
starting with a morphism as in (1a) and transforming it to and then to (1b) is the identity operation;
starting with a morphism as in (2b) and transforming it to (1) and then to (2a) is the identity operation.
In conclusion, the transformations (1) (2) consitute a hom-isomorphism that witnesses an adjunction of the first claimed form (1).
The second case follows analogously, but a little more directly since no pullback is involved:
(1a)
(2)
(1b)
In conclusion, the transformations (1) (2) consitute a hom-isomorphism that witnesses an adjunction of the second claimed form (2).
(left adjoint of sliced adjunction forms adjuncts)
The sliced adjunction (Prop. ) in the second form (2) is such that the sliced left adjoint sends slicing morphism to their adjuncts , in that (again by this Prop.):
The two adjunctions in admit the following joint generalisation, which is proven HTT, lem. 5.2.5.2. (Note that the statement there is even more general and here we only use the case where .)
(sliced adjoints)
Let
be a pair of adjoint ∞-functors, where the ∞-category has all homotopy pullbacks. Suppose further we are given objects and together with a morphism and its adjunct .
Then there is an induced a pair of adjoint ∞-functors between the slice ∞-categories of the form
where:
is the composite
of
the evident functor induced by ;
the composition with (i.e. the left base change along ).
is the composite
of
the evident functor induced by ;
the homotopy along (i.e. the base change along ).
See slice of presheaves is presheaves on slice.
Let be a category, an object of and let be the over category of over . Write for the category of presheaves on and write for the over category of presheaves on over the presheaf , where is the Yoneda embedding.
There is an equivalence of categories
The functor takes to the presheaf which is equipped with the natural transformation with component map .
A weak inverse of is given by the functor
which sends to given by
where is the pullback
Suppose the presheaf does not actually depend on the morphisms to , i.e. suppose that it factors through the forgetful functor from the over category to :
Then and hence with respect to the closed monoidal structure on presheaves.
See also functors and comma categories.
For the analogous statement in (∞,1)-category theory see at (∞,1)-category of (∞,1)-presheaves – Interaction with overcategories?.
A colimit in an over category is computed as a colimit in the underlying category.
Precisely: let be a category, an object, and the corresponding overcategory, and the obvious projection.
Let be any functor. Then, if it exists, the colimit of in is the image under of the colimit over :
and is uniquely characterized by this way.
This statement, and its proof, is the formal dual to the corresponding statement for undercategories, see there.
For a category, a diagram, the comma category (the over-category if is the point) and a diagram in the comma category, then the limit in coincides with the limit in .
For a proof see at (∞,1)-limit here.
As a special case of the above discussion of limits and colimits in a slice we obtain the following statement, which of course is also immediately checked explicitly.
If has an initial object , then has an initial object, given by .
The terminal object of is .
over-category
Formalization in cubical Agda:
Last revised on September 11, 2024 at 13:05:52. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.