For comparison, this diagram shows a typical arrow composition in an ordinary category. (Without arrow composition, it is simply a directed graph.) The arrows and in the diagram are consecutive; they connect in In an ordinary category, the composition of any pair of consecutive arrows exists, whereas in a multiplicative graph, a pair of consecutive arrows is not necessarily composable.
Arrow composition in an ordinary category satisfies the following property: if arrows and connect in the sense that their composition is defined, and, moreover, and In a multiplicative graph, however, condition does not guarantee the existence of within that structure without further assumptions – but if this composition exists, it also satisfies and When drawing a diagram for a multiplicative graph, it is almost always necessary to explicitly draw all existing arrows that play a role in the argument. For example, as shown in Coppey (1980), square diagrams in a multiplicative graph can take one of five types depending on which potential compositions in the diagram are actually defined.
This notion first appears in Ehresmann's book Catégories et structures. The French school bases its definition of sketch on the notion of a multiplicative graph, because this definition required a category-like structure that avoided redundant axioms as much as possible. This structure is the multiplicative graph, and this is a type of relaxed notion of category, such as a semicategory.
Cury studied enriched multiplicative graph. As a more general notion, there is the compositional graph, and multiplicative graphs can be seen as strongly identitive compositional graphs.
A multiplicative graph is couple formed by a set denoted by , and a partial law of composition on satisfying the following axioms:
is a mapping from a subset of (denoted by and called the set of composable couples) into ; instead of , we write and we call the composite of .
There exists a reflexive graph (i.e. and are retractions from onto a subset of , denoted by ), such that:
(existence of units [existence of composition for loops]): For each element of , the composites and are defined, and we have
Here, is the right identity of and is called the source of , while is the left identity of and is called the target of ;
(coherence of dom/cod): If the composite is defined, then:
From the condition 2, the reflexive graph is uniquely defined.
Inverse morphisms are not unique
Let be a multiplicative graph, if one has a and (resp. and ), then we say that admit a right (resp. left) inverse of a morphism in . If there exists an , we say that in is invertible such that is the right and left inverse of in , then we called an inverse of in . If is a multiplicative graph and if admit f' for right (resp. left) inverse in , one has:
and
While inverse morphisms in a ordinary category are unique, a morphisme of multiplicative graph can have several inverse morphisms. The law of composition are shown in the table below:
Let and be two multiplicative graph. A functor (Ehresmann called this a neofunctor. Since the functors between categories are ordinary functors, in this article, the functor between multiplicative graphs, we just write it as "functor" in italics.) from toward is a triple , where is a mapping from into such that for each and that:
If is defined in , then is defined in , and
We say also that :\Sigma \rightarrow \Sigma ^{\prime }}
is a functor; we write instead of
and denotes the restriction :\Sigma _{o}\rightarrow \Sigma _{o}^{\prime }}
of .
If :\Sigma \rightarrow \Sigma ^{\prime }}
and are two functors, we denote
by , the functor from to assigning
to in .
An ordinary functor must preserve identity morphisms and composition of morphisms, but in a multiplicative graph, the composibility of a pair of connected morphisms is not assumed.[clarification needed]
Example
An ordinary category is a multiplicative graph if it satisfies the following two axioms:
(composibility):all the couples where are composable (so that is the pullback of );
(strong associativity):the law of composition being furthermore associative.
For the two axioms above, a notion got by adding only the associativity axiom (that is, associativity is not strong) to a multiplicative graph, that is, a notion that an ordinary category without the composibility axiom, this is called a precategory. But, this is not standard terminology, a precategory is usually synonymous with a semigroupoid and does not require each object to have an identity morphism.
The dual class of multiplicative graph is multiplicative graph.
↑Ehresmann 1965, ch. I, §.B) Graphes multiplicatifs et catègories. For the definition of "classe multiplicative", see ch. I, § A) Classes multiplicatives.
Ehresmann, Charles (1969). "Construction de structures libres". Category Theory, Homology Theory and their Applications II. Lecture Notes in Mathematics (in French). Vol.92. pp.74–104. doi:10.1007/BFb0080766. ISBN978-3-540-04611-0.