Fractal Sets as Final Coalgebras Obtained by Completing an Initial Algebra

This paper is a contribution to the presentation of fractal sets in terms of final coalgebras.The first result on this topic was Freyd's Theorem: the unit interval [0,1] is the final coalgebra ofa certain functor on the category of bipointed sets. Leinster 2011 offersa sweeping generalization of this result. He is able to represent many of what would be intuitivelycalled "self-similar" spaces using (a) bimodules (also called profunctors or distributors),(b) an examination of non-degeneracy conditions on functors of various sorts; (c) a construction offinal coalgebras for the types of functors of interest using a notion of resolution. In addition to thecharacterization of fractals sets as sets, his seminal paper also characterizes them as topological spaces.Our major contribution is to suggest that in many cases of interest, point (c) above on resolutionsis not needed in the construction of final coalgebras. Instead, one may obtain a number of spaces ofinterest as the Cauchy completion of an initial algebra,and this initial algebra is the set of points in a colimit of an omega-sequence of finite metric spaces.This generalizes Hutchinson's 1981 characterization of fractal attractors asclosures of the orbits of the critical points. In addition to simplifying the overall machinery, it also presents a metric space which is ``computationally related'' to the overall fractal. For example, when applied to Freyd's construction, our method yields the metric space.of dyadic rational numbers in [0,1].Our second contribution is not completed at this time, but it is a set of results on \emph{metric space}characterizations of final coalgebras. This point was raised as an open issue in Hasuo, Jacobs, and Niqui 2010,and our interest in quotient metrics comes from their paper. So in terms of (a)--(c) above, our workdevelops (a) and (b) in metric settings while dropping (c).

A comparison of concepts from computable analysis and effective descriptive set theory

Computable analysis and effective descriptive set theory are both concerned with complete metric spaces, functions between them and subsets thereof in an effective setting. The precise relationship of the various definitions used in the two disciplines has so far been neglected, a situation this paper is meant to remedy.As the role of the Cauchy completion is relevant for both effective approaches to Polish spaces, we consider the interplay of effectivity and completion in some more detail.

Enriched accessible categories

We consider category theory enriched in a locally finitely presentable symmetric monoidal closed category ν. We define the ν-filtered colimits as those colimits weighted by a ν-flat presheaf and consider the corresponding notion of ν-accessible category. We prove that ν-accessible categories coincide with the categories of ν-flat presheaves and also with the categories of ν-points of the categories of ν-presheaves. Moreover, the ν-locally finitely presentable categories are exactly the ν-cocomplete finitely accessible ones. To prove this last result, we show that the Cauchy completion of a small ν-category Cis equivalent to the category of ν-finitely presentable ν-flat presheaves on C.

Cauchy Completion Categories

A general procedure is introduced for identifying categories of Cauchy spaces which have completions which possess a certain convergence property P, and for constructing completion functors on such categories. These results are applied to obtain a characterization of Cauchy spaces which allow T3 completions, and to construct T3 completions for categories of Cauchy groups and Cauchy lattices.

On bundle completion of parallelizable manifolds

In (5), Schmidt devised a procedure for completing a space-time M by adjoining a boundary ∂M called the b-boundary. Bosshard(1) and Johnson(4) have shown that certain Friedmann and Schwarzschild space-times have non-Hausdorff b-completions.In (2), (3), the first author considered a modification of the b-completion which gives a Hausdorff completion in the Friedmann case. The modification used a parallelization of the space-time and can be given in terms of the linear connexion determined by the parallelization. We show that the completion obtained is the Cauchy completion in a particular Riemannian metric on the manifold and so is always Hausdorff.