Category of groups

# Category of groups

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In mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

, the category
Category theory
Category theory is an area of study in mathematics that examines in an abstract way the properties of particular mathematical concepts, by formalising them as collections of objects and arrows , where these collections satisfy certain basic conditions...

Grp has the class
Class (set theory)
In set theory and its applications throughout mathematics, a class is a collection of sets which can be unambiguously defined by a property that all its members share. The precise definition of "class" depends on foundational context...

of all groups
Group (mathematics)
In mathematics, a group is an algebraic structure consisting of a set together with an operation that combines any two of its elements to form a third element. To qualify as a group, the set and the operation must satisfy a few conditions called group axioms, namely closure, associativity, identity...

for objects and group homomorphism
Group homomorphism
In mathematics, given two groups and , a group homomorphism from to is a function h : G → H such that for all u and v in G it holds that h = h \cdot h...

s for morphism
Morphism
In mathematics, a morphism is an abstraction derived from structure-preserving mappings between two mathematical structures. The notion of morphism recurs in much of contemporary mathematics...

s. As such, it is a concrete category
Concrete category
In mathematics, a concrete category is a category that is equipped with a faithful functor to the category of sets. This functor makes it possible to think of the objects of the category as sets with additional structure, and of its morphisms as structure-preserving functions...

. The study of this category is known as group theory
Group theory
In mathematics and abstract algebra, group theory studies the algebraic structures known as groups.The concept of a group is central to abstract algebra: other well-known algebraic structures, such as rings, fields, and vector spaces can all be seen as groups endowed with additional operations and...

.

The monomorphism
Monomorphism
In the context of abstract algebra or universal algebra, a monomorphism is an injective homomorphism. A monomorphism from X to Y is often denoted with the notation X \hookrightarrow Y....

s in Grp are precisely the injective homomorphisms, the epimorphism
Epimorphism
In category theory, an epimorphism is a morphism f : X → Y which is right-cancellative in the sense that, for all morphisms ,...

s are precisely the surjective homomorphisms, and the isomorphism
Isomorphism
In abstract algebra, an isomorphism is a mapping between objects that shows a relationship between two properties or operations.  If there exists an isomorphism between two structures, the two structures are said to be isomorphic.  In a certain sense, isomorphic structures are...

s are precisely the bijective homomorphisms.

The category Grp is both complete and co-complete
Complete category
In mathematics, a complete category is a category in which all small limits exist. That is, a category C is complete if every diagram F : J → C where J is small has a limit in C. Dually, a cocomplete category is one in which all small colimits exist...

. The category-theoretical product
Product (category theory)
In category theory, the product of two objects in a category is a notion designed to capture the essence behind constructions in other areas of mathematics such as the cartesian product of sets, the direct product of groups, the direct product of rings and the product of topological spaces...

in Grp is just the direct product of groups
Direct product of groups
In the mathematical field of group theory, the direct product is an operation that takes two groups and and constructs a new group, usually denoted...

while the category-theoretical coproduct
Coproduct
In category theory, the coproduct, or categorical sum, is the category-theoretic construction which includes the disjoint union of sets and of topological spaces, the free product of groups, and the direct sum of modules and vector spaces. The coproduct of a family of objects is essentially the...

in Grp is the free product
Free product
In mathematics, specifically group theory, the free product is an operation that takes two groups G and H and constructs a new group G ∗ H. The result contains both G and H as subgroups, is generated by the elements of these subgroups, and is the “most general” group having these properties...

of groups. The zero objects in Grp are the trivial group
Trivial group
In mathematics, a trivial group is a group consisting of a single element. All such groups are isomorphic so one often speaks of the trivial group. The single element of the trivial group is the identity element so it usually denoted as such, 0, 1 or e depending on the context...

s (consisting of just an identity element).

The category of abelian groups
Category of abelian groups
In mathematics, the category Ab has the abelian groups as objects and group homomorphisms as morphisms. This is the prototype of an abelian category....

, Ab, is a full subcategory of Grp. Ab is an abelian category
Abelian category
In mathematics, an abelian category is a category in which morphisms and objects can be added and in which kernels and cokernels exist and have desirable properties. The motivating prototype example of an abelian category is the category of abelian groups, Ab. The theory originated in a tentative...

, but Grp is not. Indeed, Grp isn't even an additive category
In mathematics, specifically in category theory, an additive category is a preadditive category C such that all finite collections of objects A1,...,An of C have a biproduct A1 ⊕ ⋯ ⊕ An in C....

, because there is no natural way to define the "sum" of two group homomorphisms. (The set of morphisms from the symmetric group
Symmetric group
In mathematics, the symmetric group Sn on a finite set of n symbols is the group whose elements are all the permutations of the n symbols, and whose group operation is the composition of such permutations, which are treated as bijective functions from the set of symbols to itself...

S3 of order three to itself, , has ten elements: an element z whose product on either side with every element of E is z (the homomorphism sending every element to the identity), three elements such that their product on one fixed side is always itself (the projections onto the three subgroups of order two), and six automorphisms. If Grp were an additive category, then this set E of ten elements would be a ring
Ring (mathematics)
In mathematics, a ring is an algebraic structure consisting of a set together with two binary operations usually called addition and multiplication, where the set is an abelian group under addition and a semigroup under multiplication such that multiplication distributes over addition...

. In any ring, the zero element is singled out by the property that 0x=x0=0 for all x in the ring, and so z would have to be the zero of E. However, there are no two nonzero elements of E whose product is z, so this finite ring would have no zero divisor
Zero divisor
In abstract algebra, a nonzero element a of a ring is a left zero divisor if there exists a nonzero b such that ab = 0. Similarly, a nonzero element a of a ring is a right zero divisor if there exists a nonzero c such that ca = 0. An element that is both a left and a right zero divisor is simply...

s. A finite ring
Finite ring
In mathematics, more specifically abstract algebra, a finite ring is a ring that has a finite number of elements....

with no zero divisors is a field
Field (mathematics)
In abstract algebra, a field is a commutative ring whose nonzero elements form a group under multiplication. As such it is an algebraic structure with notions of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, satisfying certain axioms...

, but there is no field with ten elements because every finite field
Finite field
In abstract algebra, a finite field or Galois field is a field that contains a finite number of elements. Finite fields are important in number theory, algebraic geometry, Galois theory, cryptography, and coding theory...

has for its order, the power of a prime.)

Every morphism f : GH in Grp has a category-theoretic kernel
Kernel (category theory)
In category theory and its applications to other branches of mathematics, kernels are a generalization of the kernels of group homomorphisms, the kernels of module homomorphisms and certain other kernels from algebra...

(given by the ordinary kernel of algebra
Kernel (algebra)
In the various branches of mathematics that fall under the heading of abstract algebra, the kernel of a homomorphism measures the degree to which the homomorphism fails to be injective. An important special case is the kernel of a matrix, also called the null space.The definition of kernel takes...

ker f = {x in G | f(x) = e}), and also a category-theoretic cokernel (given by the factor group of H by the normal closure
Normal closure
The term normal closure is used in two senses in mathematics:* In group theory, the normal closure of a subset of a group is the smallest normal subgroup that contains the subset; see conjugate closure....

of f(H) in H). Unlike in abelian categories, it is not true that every monomorphism in Grp is the kernel of its cokernel.

The notion of exact sequence
Exact sequence
An exact sequence is a concept in mathematics, especially in homological algebra and other applications of abelian category theory, as well as in differential geometry and group theory...

is meaningful in Grp, and some results from the theory of abelian categories, such as the nine lemma
Nine lemma
In mathematics, the nine lemma is a statement about commutative diagrams and exact sequences valid in any abelian category, as well as in the category of groups. It states: ifis a commutative diagram and all columns as well as the two bottom rows are exact, then the top row is exact as well...

, the five lemma
Five lemma
In mathematics, especially homological algebra and other applications of abelian category theory, the five lemma is an important and widely used lemma about commutative diagrams....

, and their consequences hold true in Grp. The snake lemma
Snake lemma
The snake lemma is a tool used in mathematics, particularly homological algebra, to construct long exact sequences. The snake lemma is valid in every abelian category and is a crucial tool in homological algebra and its applications, for instance in algebraic topology...

however is not true in Grp.