Skip to main content
2 of 17
deleted 2 characters in body
user avatar
user avatar

Dualizing the Notion of Topological Space

Defining a topological space on a set $X$ is equivalent to designating certain subobjects of $X$ in ${\bf Set}$ (monomorphisms into $X$ up to equivalence) as open. The requirements on the open sets of a topological space $X$ are equivalent to requiring the following:

  1. $X \rightarrow X$ and $\emptyset \rightarrow X$ are open.

  2. If $X_i \rightarrow X$ are open subobjects of $X$ for finite $i \in I$ then so is their product in the category of subobjects of $X$

  3. If $X_i \rightarrow X$ are open subobjects of $X$ for $i \in I$, then so is their coproduct in the category of subobjects of $X$.

My question is about what happens when one dualizes this notion:

Let $X$ be a set and consider a subset of its quotient objects $\mathcal{S}$ such that:

  1. $X \rightarrow X \in \mathcal{S}$ and $X \rightarrow \{ * \} \in \mathcal{S}$.

  2. If $X \rightarrow X_i \in \mathcal{S}$ for finite $i \in I$ then $\amalg_{i \in I} (X \rightarrow X_i) \in \mathcal{S}$, where the coproduct is taken in the category of quotient objects of $X$.

  3. If $X \rightarrow X_i \in \mathcal{S}$ for $i \in I$, then $\prod (X \rightarrow X_i) \in \mathcal{S}$, where the product is taken in the category of quotient objects of $X$.

Does this structure arise anywhere in practice? What is known about this notion of 'co-topological spaces'? Is there a place I can learn about them?

user30211