String diagram

In category theory, string diagrams are a way of representing 2-cells in 2-categories.

Definition

The idea is to represent structures of dimension d by structures of dimension 2-d, using the Poincaré duality. Thus,

The parallel composition of 2-cells corresponds to the horizontal juxtaposition of diagrams and the sequential composition to the vertical juxtaposition of diagrams.

Duality between commutative diagrams and string diagrams.
Duality between commutative diagrams (on the left hand side) and string diagrams (on the right hand side)


Example

Consider an adjunction between two categories and where is left adjoint of and the natural transformations and are respectively the unit and the counit. The string diagrams corresponding to these natural transformations are:

String diagram of the unit
String diagram of the unit
String diagram of the counit
String diagram of the counit
String diagram of the identity 2-cell
String diagram of the identity

The string corresponding to the identity functor is drawn as a dotted line and can be omitted. The definition of an adjunction requires the following equalities:

The first one is depicted as

Diagrammatic representation of the equality
Diagrammatic representation of the equality

Other diagrammatic languages

Monoidal categories can also be pictured this way[1] since a strict monoidal category can be seen as a 2-category with only one object (there will therefore be only one type of plane) and Mac Lane's strictness theorem states that any monoidal category is monoidally equivalent to a strict one. The graphical language of string diagrams for monoidal categories may be extended to represent expressions in categories with other structure, such as symmetric monoidal categories, dagger categories,[2] and is related to geometric presentations for braided monoidal categories[3] and ribbon categories.[4]

External links

References

  1. Joyal, André; Street, Ross (1991). "The geometry of tensor calculus, I". Advances in Mathematics. 88 (1): 55–112. doi:10.1016/0001-8708(91)90003-P. ISSN 0001-8708. Retrieved 2016-03-21.
  2. Selinger, P. (2010). "A Survey of Graphical Languages for Monoidal Categories". In Bob Coecke (ed.). New Structures for Physics. Lecture Notes in Physics. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. pp. 289–355. arXiv:0908.3347Freely accessible. ISBN 978-3-642-12820-2. Retrieved 2016-03-21.
  3. Joyal, A.; Street, R. (1993). "Braided Tensor Categories". Advances in Mathematics. 102 (1): 20–78. doi:10.1006/aima.1993.1055. ISSN 0001-8708. Retrieved 2016-03-21.
  4. Shum, Mei Chee (1994-04-11). "Tortile tensor categories". Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra. 93 (1): 57–110. doi:10.1016/0022-4049(92)00039-T. ISSN 0022-4049. Retrieved 2016-03-21.


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