Monoidal Categories
An introduction to monoidal categories
Monoidal Categories#
Introduction#
From abstract algebra, we are familiar with the notion of many several algebraic structures, such as groups, rings, fields, etc. To study these algebraic structures in the sense of category theory, we need to understand the way these algebraic structures are built on top of each other. To go alongside these definitions, we will sketch the containment hierarchy of these algebraic structures.
Magma#
A magma is a set equipped with a binary operation.
Semigroup#
A semigroup is a magma with associativity.
Monoid#
A monoid is a semigroup with an identity element.
Commutative Monoid#
A commutative monoid is a monoid with commutativity.
Group#
A group is a monoid with inverses.
Abelian Group#
An abelian group is a group with commutativity.
Ring#
A ring is an abelian group with a multiplication operation that is associative and distributes over addition.
Field#
A field is a commutative ring with a multiplicative inverse for every nonzero element.