Lenses encode protocols for synchronising systems. We continue the work begun by Chollet et al. at the Applied Category Theory Adjoint School in 2020 to study the properties of the category of small categories and asymmetric delta lenses. The forgetful functor from the category of lenses to the category of functors is already known to reflect monos and epis and preserve epis; we show that it preserves monos, and give a simpler proof that it preserves epis. Together this gives a complete characterisation of the monic and epic lenses in terms of elementary properties of their get functors.Next, we initiate the study of coequalisers of lenses. We observe that not all parallel pairs of lenses have coequalisers, and that the forgetful functor from the category of lenses to the category of functors neither preserves nor reflects all coequalisers. However, some coequalisers are reflected; we study when this occurs, and then use what we learned to show that every epic lens is regular, and that discrete opfibrations have pushouts along monic lenses. Corollaries include that every monic lens is effective, every monic epic lens is an isomorphism, and the class of all epic lenses and the class of all monic lenses form an orthogonal factorisation system.
A comprehensive account of the categorical properties of the category of small categories and asymmetric delta lenses is given in the recent works of Chollet et al. and Di Meglio. An important construction for proving many of these properties is Johnson and Rosebrugh's "pullback" of lenses, which we call the proxy pullback of lenses. We give a new treatment of the proxy pullback in terms of compatibility-a stronger notion of commutativity for squares of lenses. The proxy pullback is sometimes, but not always, a real pullback. Using new notions of sync-minimal and independent lens spans, we characterise when a lens span that forms a commuting square with a lens cospan has a comparison lens to a proxy pullback of the cospan.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.