category theory Category theory is a general theory of mathematical structures and their relations. It was introduced by Samuel Eilenberg and Saunders Mac Lane in the middle of the 20th century in their foundational work on algebraic topology. Category theory ...

and its applications to

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

, a normal monomorphism or conormal epimorphism is a particularly well-behaved type of

morphism In mathematics, a morphism is a concept of category theory that generalizes structure-preserving maps such as homomorphism between algebraic structures, functions from a set to another set, and continuous functions between topological spaces. Al ...

. A normal category is a category in which every

monomorphism In the context of abstract algebra or universal algebra, a monomorphism is an injective homomorphism. A monomorphism from to is often denoted with the notation X\hookrightarrow Y. In the more general setting of category theory, a monomorphis ...

is normal. A conormal category is one in which every

epimorphism In category theory, an epimorphism is a morphism ''f'' : ''X'' → ''Y'' that is right-cancellative in the sense that, for all objects ''Z'' and all morphisms , : g_1 \circ f = g_2 \circ f \implies g_1 = g_2. Epimorphisms are categorical analo ...

is conormal.

Definition

A monomorphism is normal if it is the kernel of some morphism, and an epimorphism is conormal if it is the

cokernel The cokernel of a linear mapping of vector spaces is the quotient space of the codomain of by the image of . The dimension of the cokernel is called the ''corank'' of . Cokernels are dual to the kernels of category theory, hence the nam ...

of some morphism. A category C is binormal if it's both normal and conormal. But note that some authors will use the word "normal" only to indicate that C is binormal.

Examples

In the

category of groups In mathematics, the category Grp (or Gp) has the class of all groups for objects and group homomorphisms for morphisms. As such, it is a concrete category. The study of this category is known as group theory. Relation to other categories The ...

, a monomorphism ''f'' from ''H'' to ''G'' is normal

if and only if In logic and related fields such as mathematics and philosophy, "if and only if" (often shortened as "iff") is paraphrased by the biconditional, a logical connective between statements. The biconditional is true in two cases, where either bo ...

its image is a

normal subgroup In abstract algebra, a normal subgroup (also known as an invariant subgroup or self-conjugate subgroup) is a subgroup that is invariant under conjugation by members of the group of which it is a part. In other words, a subgroup N of the group ...

of ''G''. In particular, if ''H'' is a

subgroup In group theory, a branch of mathematics, a subset of a group G is a subgroup of G if the members of that subset form a group with respect to the group operation in G. Formally, given a group (mathematics), group under a binary operation ...

of ''G'', then the

inclusion map In mathematics, if A is a subset of B, then the inclusion map is the function \iota that sends each element x of A to x, treated as an element of B: \iota : A\rightarrow B, \qquad \iota(x)=x. An inclusion map may also be referred to as an inclu ...

''i'' from ''H'' to ''G'' is a monomorphism, and will be normal if and only if ''H'' is a normal subgroup of ''G''. In fact, this is the origin of the term "normal" for monomorphisms. On the other hand, every epimorphism in the category of groups is conormal (since it is the cokernel of its own kernel), so this category is conormal. In an

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 prototypical example of an abelian category is the category o ...

, every monomorphism is the kernel of its cokernel, and every epimorphism is the cokernel of its kernel. Thus, abelian categories are always binormal. The category of

abelian group In mathematics, an abelian group, also called a commutative group, is a group in which the result of applying the group operation to two group elements does not depend on the order in which they are written. That is, the group operation is commu ...

s is the fundamental example of an abelian category, and accordingly every subgroup of an abelian group is a normal subgroup.

References

*Section I.14 {{DEFAULTSORT:Normal Morphism Morphisms