The extensive completion of a distributive category

J.R.B. Cockett and Stephen Lack

This appeared in Theory and Applications of Categories 8:541--554, 2001.

A category with finite products and finite coproducts is said to be distributive if the canonical map AxB+AxC-->Ax(B+C) is invertible for all objects A, B, and C. Given a distributive category D, we describe a universal functor D-->Dex preserving finite products and finite coproudcts, for which Dex is extensive; that is, for all objects A and B the functor Dex/A x Dex/B--> Dex/(A+B) is an equivalence of categories.


The entire paper is available from the journal.


Steve Lack
Last modified: Thu Dec 20 08:39:45 EST 2001