2
$\begingroup$

$\newcommand{\B}{\mathcal{B}}$ $\newcommand{\C}{\mathcal{C}}$ $\newcommand{\hom}{\mathrm{Hom}}$ There is a standard notion of a category $\C$ enriched over another category $\B,$ which informally captures the intuition that, for any pair of objects $X,Y\in \C,$ the mapping space $\hom(X,Y)$ is "enriched" to an object of $\mathcal{B}.$ For example, the category $\mathcal{C} = \mathrm{ComplexMfd}$ of complex manifolds is enriched over the category $\B = \mathrm{Top}$ of topological spaces, since the set of holomorphic maps $X\to Y$ between complex manifolds is a topological space in the compact-open topology.

I want to use a similar term to "$\C$ is enriched over $\B$" for a more general situation, where instead of asking that $\hom_\C(X,Y)$ is an object of $\B$ as before, I only want $\hom(X,Y)$ to be a presheaf on $\B$ (i.e., a functor from $\B$ to sets). For example if $\C= \mathrm{ComplexMfd}$ is once again the category of complex manifolds and $\B=\mathrm{Mfd}$ is the category of smooth manifolds, it is no longer the case that $\hom_\C(X,Y)$ is an object of $\B$: indeed, the space of holomorphic maps is in general not even finite-dimensional. However, for any pair of complex manifolds $X,Y$ and a real manifold $T,$ there is a notion of "a family $$\{f_t:X\to Y\mid_{t\in T}\}$$ of holomorphic maps $X\to Y$ indexed by $T$" (explicitly, these are families of maps indexed by $t\in T$ such that the associated map of sets $T\times X\to Y$ is a map of manifolds).

In this situation, $\hom(X,Y)$ is a presheaf on $\B$ (which takes $T\in \B$ to the set of families of maps $X\to Y$ indexed by $T$), and what I am looking for is equivalent to saying that $\C$ is enriched over presheaves on $\B$. But the notation "enriched over presheaves" is a mouthful. I want a better term, like "$\C$ is weakly enriched over $\B$" or something like this. Does such a term exist?

$\endgroup$
6
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ How about 'presheaf enriched over $\mathcal{B}$'? $\endgroup$
    – Alec Rhea
    Commented Oct 30, 2022 at 13:46
  • $\begingroup$ I guess yes, as long as you have a monoidal structure on $\mathcal B$ (your description seems to take the Cartesian monoidal structure tacitly), and it might be pseudo-enriched in Lurie's Higher Algebra, Def 4.2.1.25. I guess that an appendix of Lucas Mann's thesis also contains some more details. $\endgroup$
    – Z. M
    Commented Oct 30, 2022 at 13:57
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ As an aside, the particular example you give is an enrichment in diffeological spaces, a particularly special kind of presheaf. But I don't think there's any very non-obvious answer to the actual question. You can write $\widehat{ \mathcal B}$ for the presheaf category and then "enriched in $\widehat{ \mathcal B}$" is no wordier than "enriched in $\mathcal B$." $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 31, 2022 at 23:58
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ I don't know if such a term exists in the literature, but if I were making one up I might say "pro-enriched", by analogy to how a "profunctor" is like a functor but takes values in presheaves rather than objects, and similarly a "promonoidal category" is one whose tensor product is a profunctor rather than a functor. $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 2, 2022 at 20:39
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ Another interesting example of (a generalized version) of this sort of thing is that if $C$ is a category with pullbacks, then a category that is both "enriched and indexed" over $C$ is equivalent to a "locally small fibration" over $C$. An arbitrary fibration then corresponds (modulo size) to a category that is pro-enriched and indexed over $C$. This is described in Examples 2.42, 4.7, and 7.4 of my paper Enriched indexed categories. $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 2, 2022 at 20:48

0

You must log in to answer this question.

Browse other questions tagged .