From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/4483 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: John Baez Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: KT Chen's smooth CCC Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2008 17:16:58 -0700 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1241019974 13513 80.91.229.2 (29 Apr 2009 15:46:14 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:46:14 +0000 (UTC) To: categories Original-X-From: rrosebru@mta.ca Mon Aug 18 09:26:26 2008 -0300 Return-path: Envelope-to: categories-list@mta.ca Delivery-date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 09:26:26 -0300 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1KV3oN-0006Cr-Nk for categories-list@mta.ca; Mon, 18 Aug 2008 09:26:15 -0300 Content-Disposition: inline Original-Sender: cat-dist@mta.ca Precedence: bulk X-Keywords: X-UID: 18 Original-Lines: 34 Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:4483 Archived-At: Hi - Bill Lawvere mentioned that KT Chen had a cartesian closed category of smooth spaces. I've found this very useful in my work on geometry. I kept wanting more properties of this category, so finally my student Alex Hoffnung and I wrote a paper about it: Convenient Categories of Smooth Spaces http://arxiv.org/abs/0807.1704 Abstract: A "Chen space" is a set X equipped with a collection of "plots" - maps from convex sets to X - satisfying three simple axioms. While an individual Chen space can be much worse than a smooth manifold, the category of all Chen spaces is much better behaved than the category of smooth manifolds. For example, any subspace or quotient space of a Chen space is a Chen space, and the space of smooth maps between Chen spaces is again a Chen space. Souriau's "diffeological spaces" share these convenient properties. Here we give a unified treatment of both formalisms. Following ideas of Dubuc, we show that Chen spaces, diffeological spaces, and even simplicial complexes are examples of "concrete sheaves on a concrete site". As a result, the categories of such spaces are locally cartesian closed, with all limits, all colimits, and a weak subobject classifier. For the benefit of differential geometers, our treatment explains most of the category theory we use. In particular, at some point we break down and admit we're dealing with a "quasitopos". Best, jb