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If $(C,J)$ is a site, what is a natural condition on the Grothendieck topology $J$ to ensure that the category $Sh(C,J)$ is compactly assembled? I am both interested in the 1-categorical as well as the $\infty$-categorical case. (Compactly assembled 1-categories are also referred to as continuous categories in older literature.)

A few remarks: We know that $Sh(X)$ is compactly assembled if $X$ is a locally compact Hausdorff space. Also, a (Grothendieck) topos is compactly assembled iff it is exponentiable in the category of topoi. (See Joyal-Johnstone, the $\infty$-categorical version is discussed in Anel-Lejay, and also in Lurie-SAG, Chapter 21.) I suspect it needs to be a ``locally finite'' condition on the coverings of $J$, though that is speculation on my part.

Note: This question is very much related to Characterizing compactly assembled localizations of presheaf $\infty$-categories

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  • $\begingroup$ Where did the name "compactly assembled" come from? Continuous categories followed continuous lattices or domains. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 14 at 20:34
  • $\begingroup$ I am not quite sure where it comes from. The terminology is used quite heavily in the K-theory community. Names one should mention are probably Efimov, Nikolaus, Clausen and Scholze, among others of course. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 14 at 20:56
  • $\begingroup$ The most common case is that in which the topos is locally finitely presentable. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 14 at 21:01
  • $\begingroup$ @PaulTaylor Another one worth mentioning is Lurie, who calls them compactly assembled in SAG (Chapter 21 is exclusively on them). $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 14 at 21:05
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    $\begingroup$ @IvanDiLiberti: Yes. Unfortunately, that won't cover many important examples. E.g. categories of sheaves on a space are almost never compactly generated (= locally finitely presentable). $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 14 at 21:07

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As far as I'm aware, no such conditions is known - The paper of Anel and Lejay is the closest to an answer available in the litterature.

So, this is not an answer to the question, but more of an expanded comment explaining what is the main subtleties to keep in mind when trying to find such conditions. In short, the point of the story is that in order to understand the kind of conditions you are looking for, you need to use a description of your topos using something other than a site.

You can either take it as an explanation of why it might be a misguided question or as an explanation of what a solution need to look like.

The general idea (Which I've learned fron Anel) is the following: (this applies both 1-categorically and infinity-categorically). For a topos $T$ to be exponentiable, which as mentioned in the OP is equivalent to the topos being continuous, it is enough for the exponential $S[O]^T$ to exists, where $S[O]$ is the object classifier, i.e. such that $Hom(T,S[O]) = T$. This means in particular that we need to have a topos whose points are the objects of $T$, so we need the objects of $T$ to admit a description using geometric logic, that is using only condition involving finite limits and arbitrary colimits.

Of course, In general the sheaf condition involve infinite limits - that's why not all topos are exponentiable! But, the problem is that even in the case of a locally compact Haussdorf space the usual description of sheaves still involves infinite limits and is non-geometric.

The trick to get out of this problem is that in some case, there is an alternative way of describing sheaves - what Anel and Lejay called "Leray sheaves". This refers to Leray's original definition of sheaves, which were defined on manifolds only and instead associating to each open a set of sections associated to each compact a set of section. There is an equivalent definition of a sheaf on a locally compact space in terms of its section on all compact subspace, and this definition only involves finite limtis and arbitrary colimits instead of the infinite limits of the usual definition of a sheaf.

This is what makes the notion of sheaf "geometric" and why there is a topos that classifies sheaves on $T$ (that is $S[O]^T$).

So, if you do have finiteness conditions on your topology, then yes, you can deduce from it that the topos is exponentiable, but the converse is a lot more subtle: As soon as you can find some alternative definition of sheaves, potentially using other sets than the set of sections, where the various condition in the definition only involves finite limits, then the topos is exponentiable. But this alternative definition can have very little to do with the site you started from, so it might be very hard to track it back to a condition on the site.

The paper of Anel and Lejay gives the most* general description of what such an alternative description might look like.

(*: by "most" I mean it is a necessary and sufficient condition, so that any other such description should be deducible form there's)

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  • $\begingroup$ This is a wonderful answer. I'm torn about accepting it, since there might still be someone else coming up with useful conditions for a site. The one "problem" I have with Leray sheaves is that it doesn't seem so straightforward to show that the categories I have in mind are in fact given as such Leray sheaves. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 15 at 18:01
  • $\begingroup$ I absolutely agree that someone might have a better answer. I did spend some time trying to find one a few years ago unsuccessfully, but I wouldn't rule out someone else did better. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 15 at 18:35

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