8
$\begingroup$

This has to do with the "pushout-product" construction.

In a category $\mathcal{C}$, suppose we have $C\gets A\to B$ with pushout $D$ and $Y\gets W\to X$ with pushout $Z$. Then we can form $$ (C\times Z) \cup_{C\times Y} (D\times Y) \gets (A\times X) \cup_{A\times W} (B\times W) \to B\times X . $$ This diagram cones to $D\times Z$.

Questions:

  1. Is $D\times Z$ the pushout?
  2. It is the pushout in set and in various topological contexts, so is $D\times Z$ the pushout for certain good-enough categories?
  3. Is there a good reference for these answers?
$\endgroup$
2
  • 3
    $\begingroup$ The simplest standard assumption for this to work is that the two pushouts you assume at the begining should be preserved by products (at least by products by all the object appearing in the question). So this for example holds in any cartesian closed category (as in this case, product are left adjoint functors and hence preserve all colimits). I'm affraid writting a complete proof involves a bit to much diagrams for MO. The rough idea is as follows: $\endgroup$ Commented Sep 11, 2020 at 14:59
  • 3
    $\begingroup$ Using this preservation of the pushout involved by products, you can expand $D \times Z$ as the colimit of some diagram with the shape of $3 \times 3$ array whose node are each products of the form $C \times Y, A \times Y, A \times X, \dots...$. You can then do some formal manipulation on the diagram to regroup the terms in the pushout and write the resulting colimits as this pushout of pushout... Let me know if you need more details. $\endgroup$ Commented Sep 11, 2020 at 15:01

1 Answer 1

8
$\begingroup$

As Simon says in the comments, it is sufficient that the product preserves pushouts in each variable, which is the case in Set and in any cartesian closed category of spaces. (Indeed, the product can be replaced by any two-variable functor that preserves pushouts in each variable.)

Unfortunately at the moment I can't find a good reference that says exactly this, although I would be more surprised than not if it doesn't exist somewhere in the literature. Simon sketched one proof method in the comments; here's a slightly more abstract one that is at least closer to some things in the literature.

First notice that the goal is equivalent to saying that the pushout product functor $\hat{\times} : \mathcal{C}^{\mathbf{2}} \times\mathcal{C}^{\mathbf{2}} \to \mathcal{C}^{\mathbf{2}} $ takes a pair of pushout squares (regarded as morphisms in the arrow category $\mathcal{C}^{\mathbf{2}} $) to a pushout square. Since pushout squares are closed under composition (again, as morphisms in $\mathcal{C}^{\mathbf{2}} $), it suffices to show that $\hat{\times}$ preserves pushout squares in each variable separately. Thus, we can reduce to the case where we have a pushout $D$ of $C\leftarrow A \to B$ and a morphism $W\to X$, and we want to show that $D\times X$ is the pushout of

$$ (C\times X) \cup_{C\times W} (D\times W) \leftarrow (A\times X) \cup_{A\times W} B\times W \to B\times X $$

Now there is a commutative cube in which the top and bottom faces are the images of our given pushout square $D = C\cup_A B$ under the functors $(-)\times W$ and $(-)\times X$, while the vertical arrows are induced by the map $W\to X$. I trust you can draw this cube; let's orient it so that $A$ and $B$ appear on the back face and $C$ and $D$ appear on the front face.

The back and front faces of this cube are not pushouts. But if we take the pushouts of their underlying spans, the induced maps from these pushouts to the lower-right corners are the two pushout-product maps in question, and the induced square between them is the one we're interested in. A diagram of this sort of "pushouts in two faces of a cube" can be found, for instance, at the top of page 9 of this paper; it's not there in the situation of a pushout product, but the immediate goal is the same, namely to show that the relevant square is a pushout. This follows by repeated application of the pushout pasting lemma (in both directions) to the four squares that are known to be pushouts.

$\endgroup$
1
  • $\begingroup$ This is great! Thanks $\endgroup$
    – Jeff Strom
    Commented Sep 11, 2020 at 22:04

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .