# nLab wide pullback

### Context

#### Limits and colimits

limits and colimits

# Contents

## Definition

A wide pullback in a category $\mathcal{C}$ is a product (of arbitrary cardinality) in a slice category $\mathcal{C} \downarrow C$. In terms of $\mathcal{C}$, this can be expressed as a limit over a category obtained from a discrete category by adjoining a terminal object.

Yet more explicitly, the wide pullback of a family of coterminal morphisms $f_i\colon A_i \to C$ is an object $P$ equipped with projection $p_i\colon P\to A_i$ such that $f_i p_i$ is independent of $i$, and which is universal with this property.

Binary wide pullbacks are the same as ordinary pullbacks, a.k.a. fiber products.

Of course, a wide pushout is a wide pullback in the opposite category.

## Properties

• A category has wide pullbacks (of all small cardinalities) if and only if it has (binary) pullbacks and cofiltered limits.

• The saturation of the class of wide pullbacks is the class of limits over categories $C$ whose fundamental groupoid $\Pi_1(C)$ is trivial.

On the other hand, together with a terminal object, wide pullbacks generate all limits:

###### Proposition

A category $C$ with all wide pullbacks and a terminal object $1$ is complete. If $C$ is complete and $F: C \to D$ preserves wide pullbacks and the terminal object, then it preserves all limits.

###### Proof

To build up arbitrary products $\prod_{i \in I} c_i$ in $C$, take the wide pullback of the family $c_i \to 1$. Then to build equalizers of diagrams $f, g: c \stackrel{\to}{\to} d$, construct the pullback of the diagram

$\array{ & & d \\ & & \downarrow \delta \\ c & \underset{\langle f, g \rangle}{\to} & d \times d }$

From products and equalizers, we can get arbitrary limits.

## References

• Robert Paré, Simply connected limits. Can. J. Math., Vol. XLH, No. 4, 1990, pp. 731-746, CMS

Last revised on January 4, 2013 at 21:16:50. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.