Proposition 12.4. Joyal’s category is the smallest full subcategory of containing the grids (the full subcategory of spanned by the image of ) and closed under retracts. Furthermore, the morphisms in the set may be obtained as retracts of the set .
Proof. Both statements follow by induction. First note that itself is closed under retracts [9, Proposition 3.14]. In the base case, the category consists of precisely the grids, and the sets of morphisms agree . Now assume, by induction, that every object of is the retract of a grid , for some object . In fact, given any finite collection of objects they may be obtained as the retract of a single grid. This grid may be obtained as the image of , where is the maximum of the collection . It now follows easily that the object is a retract of the grid coming from the object .
To prove the second statement we note that there are two types of maps in , those in and the maps
for and . This later map is a retract of the image under of the map
which is a map in . Here is such that is the retract of the grid corresponding to .
The former class of morphisms in , those in , are also retracts on elements in . Specifically, if , then by induction is the retract of for some . One may then readily check that is the retract of . ∎
Original source: arXiv:1112.0040v6
Original source · 1112.0040v6