From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/3933 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Vaughan Pratt Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: The division lattice as a category: is 0 prime? Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2007 15:01:05 -0700 Message-ID: <46FAD6A1.8090408@cs.stanford.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1241019613 10967 80.91.229.2 (29 Apr 2009 15:40:13 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:40:13 +0000 (UTC) To: categories list Original-X-From: rrosebru@mta.ca Wed Sep 26 23:49:28 2007 -0300 Return-path: Envelope-to: categories-list@mta.ca Delivery-date: Wed, 26 Sep 2007 23:49:28 -0300 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1IajMA-00014k-Pg for categories-list@mta.ca; Wed, 26 Sep 2007 23:44:02 -0300 Original-Sender: cat-dist@mta.ca Precedence: bulk X-Keywords: X-UID: 57 Original-Lines: 59 Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:3933 Archived-At: Has the division lattice been organized as a category somewhere in the literature in a way that accounts somehow for 0? A simplistic construction is [FinSet^N] denoting the finitary finite-set-valued functors from the discrete category N. ("Finitary" in the sense of being zero almost everywhere.) Interpreting N as indexing the primes and coproduct as numeric multiplication, product becomes gcd and the pushout of (a,b) over its gcd is its lcm. It is simplistic by virtue of omitting (numeric) 0, which is standardly placed at the top of the division lattice. Unlike the rest of the lattice 0 is not generated from the primes by finite coproducts, suggesting it needs to feature in some sort of basis for the complete lattice. The natural thing would be to remove all but the primes and 0 from the division lattice and then try to put them back finitarily. This makes the starting point the inverted flat CPO N^* where N consists of the primes and "bottom" * is now at the top, denoting 0. (That convention makes N_* the usual flat CPO of natural numbers.) If I'm not mistaken the completion of N^* under finite coproducts has as objects two copies of the natural numbers. Below * is [FinSet^N] understood as previously. Above * is FinSet, which was created from * by completion under coproducts. This amounts to FinSet + [FinSet^N] joined at the hip with a shared initial object (numeric 1) and a shared final object (numeric 0, or *). From the Yoneda standpoint the objects are functors from N_* (the usual CPO) to FinSet. The ones below are the functors that are 0 at * and cofinitely many elements of N. The ones above are 0 at N, with * unconstrained. Yoneda's hands are a bit tied here because we are only taking coproducts. Closing under finite colimits presumably frees up Yoneda to produce FinSet x [FinSet^N] = [FinSet^{N_*}]. This might come in handy when one wants a system of pairs of numbers (m,n) for which (m,n)+(m',n') = (m+m',nxn'). Is there some abstract nonsense reason why coproducts produced the sum (actually pushout over the initial and final objects) while colimits produced the product? I arrived at all this after Steve Vickers mentioned on the univalg mailing list that ring theorists define 0 to be a prime number because then they could define n to be prime just when the ring Z/nZ extends to a field. This got me to wondering how this could be reflected in the division lattice, which has 0 at the top without however being considered a prime. I personally am too old to believe that 0 is a prime, but I can see where a younger generation could be hoodwinked. Even with the above understanding however I don't see how 0 can be understood as just another ordinary prime, any more than bottom is just another ordinary number in N_*. Vaughan Pratt