A Category of Concrete Monoids

Author

Andrew Solomon

Status

Research Report 96-7
Date: February 1996, revised April 1996

Abstract

A concrete monoid over a category C is a subset of the endomorphisms of an object of C, containing the identity and closed under composition. To contrast, an abstract monoid is just a one object category.

There is a natural notion of morphism between concrete monoids distinct from the usual morphism of abstract monoids. This type of morphism is identified via an example, and then defined, giving rise to the category of concrete monoids over C.

The utility of these definitions is explored via applications to the Theories of Semigroups, Matrices, Vines and Automata. With these definitions, it is possible for the first time to make the action monoid construction into a functor whose domain is the usual category of automata.

Key phrases

monoid. category. concrete. semigroup. automata. vine. matrices. regular category. bicategory. relation. division. filter.

Content

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