Locally subcartesian closed categories

Charles Walker




Abstract: We extend the basic theory of locally cartesian closed categories to the setting in which one has a left adjoint base change given by a coherent choice of subobjects of pullbacks (subcartesian squares), where consequently every slice category is symmetric monoidal closed with jointly monic projections. We justify this extension of the theory by showing such a category gives rise to a bicategory of polynomials in the sense of Street, in equivalence with a 2-category of subcartesian polynomial functors. The interest in these structures rests on the fact that they should provide a categorical semantics for dependent affine type theory and underlie the fundamental theorem of lopos theory. We then show that locally subcartesian categories embed into closed ones by defining a fibred convolution structure on the category of presheaves, which we use to find additional examples.