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Let $\mathcal C$ be a category whose skeleton has $\lambda$-many objects and $\kappa$-many morphisms. Then the skeleton of the endofunctor category $\mathcal C^{\mathcal C}$ has at most $\kappa^{3 \times \kappa}$ many morphisms.

My guess is that in most cases, this upper bound is achieved.

Question: What is an example of a category $\mathcal C$ (other than the terminal category or equivalents) whose skeleton has $\lambda$ many objects and $\kappa$ many morphisms, but the skeleton of whose endofunctor category $\mathcal C^{\mathcal C}$ has

  1. Strictly fewer than $\kappa^\kappa$ many morphisms?

  2. Strictly fewer than $\kappa^\kappa$ many objects?

  3. As few as $\kappa$-many morphisms?

  4. As few as $\lambda$-many objects?

EDIT: Neil Strickland's example of $B\mathbb N$ in the comments below affirmatively answers (1), (2), and (3). So it remains to see about (4).

Note that $\mathcal C^{\mathcal C}$ always has (skeletally) at least $\lambda+1$ many objects and $\kappa+1$-many morphisms, given by constant morphisms between constant endofunctors, along with the identity functor.

Note also that if $\mathcal C$ is accessible, and has as many objects and morphisms as the size of the universe, then the number of accessible endofunctors and morphisms between them is also the size of the universe. So if my guess is correct, then most endofunctors are usually non accessible.

See also here for an argument which shows that if $\mathcal C$ has small products and coproducts and is not a preorder, then $\mathcal C^{\mathcal C}$ has (skeletally) at least $2^\kappa$-many objects, where $\kappa$ is the size of the universe.

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  • $\begingroup$ A directed graph? $\endgroup$
    – markvs
    Commented Aug 22, 2021 at 18:52
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    $\begingroup$ Why is $\kappa^\lambda$ an upper bound? If $\lambda$ is 1 it seems like there can be more than $\kappa$ many morphisms (indeed $\kappa+1>\kappa$ if $\kappa$ is finite) $\endgroup$ Commented Aug 22, 2021 at 19:22
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    $\begingroup$ What if $\mathcal{C}$ is $\mathbb{N}$, considered as a category with one object? Then $\mathcal{C}^{\mathcal{C}}$ is equivalent to the discrete category with objects $\mathbb{N}$, so both $\mathcal{C}$ and $\mathcal{C}^{\mathcal{C}}$ have countably many morphisms. $\endgroup$ Commented Aug 22, 2021 at 21:50
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    $\begingroup$ @MarkSapir Thanks, I'm still not sure what you're proposing. Every category has an underlying directed graph, so I'm continuing to guess that you mean to take the free category on a directed graph. Could you say something about why you think such a category might be constructed to have few endofunctors? I'm not seeing it right now. $\endgroup$ Commented Aug 23, 2021 at 14:16
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    $\begingroup$ @MarkSapir I believe you when you say that graphs with weird endomorphism monoids can be constructed. But a graph is not a category— most graphs don’t admit even one category structure! You can always take the free category on a graph, but it seems this will generally make the endomorphism monoid grow. So unless you can clarify further, I really don’t understand your suggestion. $\endgroup$ Commented Aug 24, 2021 at 14:08

1 Answer 1

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An example of (1),(2),(3),(4) with $\kappa=\lambda=|\mathbb R|$ is to take $\mathcal C$ to be the posetal category $\mathbb R.$ This is already skeletal. Its category of endofunctors is the poset of non-decreasing functions $f:\mathbb R\to\mathbb R,$ with the pointwise order. There are at most $|\mathbb R^{\mathbb Q}|=|\mathbb R|$ such functions: $f$ is determined by the preimages $f^{-1}((-\infty,q))$ for $q\in\mathbb Q,$ each of these intervals is convex, and there are at most $|\mathbb R|$ convex subsets of $\mathbb R.$

(I don't know if there are, unconditionally, examples with $\lambda$ and $\kappa$ regular. I think the $\mathbb R$ example generalizes to $2^\mu$ with the lex order, where $\mu$ is an ordinal satisfying $|2^{2^{<\mu}}|=|2^\mu|,$ for example $\mu=\beth_\alpha$ with $\alpha$ a limit ordinal. Here $2^{<\mu}$ means the functions $\mu\to 2$ with bounded support.)

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