Isomorphism
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In mathematics, an isomorphism is a structure-preserving mapping between two structures of the same type that can be reversed by an inverse mapping. Two mathematical structures are isomorphic if an isomorphism exists between them. The word isomorphism is derived from the Ancient Greek: ἴσος isos "equal", and μορφή morphe "form" or "shape".
The interest in isomorphisms lies in the fact that two isomorphic objects have the same properties (excluding further information such as additional structure or names of objects). Thus isomorphic structures cannot be distinguished from the point of view of structure only, and may be identified. In mathematical jargon, one says that two objects are the same up to an isomorphism.[citation needed]
An automorphism is an isomorphism from a structure to itself. An isomorphism between two structures is a canonical isomorphism (a canonical map that is an isomorphism) if there is only one isomorphism between the two structures (as is the case for solutions of a universal property), or if the isomorphism is much more natural (in some sense) than other isomorphisms. For example, for every prime number p, all fields with p elements are canonically isomorphic, with a unique isomorphism. The isomorphism theorems provide canonical isomorphisms that are not unique.
The term isomorphism is mainly used for
In various areas of mathematics, isomorphisms have received specialized names, depending on the type of structure under consideration. For example:
- An isometry is an isomorphism of metric spaces.
- A homeomorphism is an isomorphism of topological spaces.
- A diffeomorphism is an isomorphism of spaces equipped with a differential structure, typically differentiable manifolds.
- A symplectomorphism is an isomorphism of symplectic manifolds.
- A permutation is an automorphism of a set.
- In projective transformations.
Category theory, which can be viewed as a formalization of the concept of mapping between structures, provides a language that may be used to unify the approach to these different aspects of the basic idea.
Examples
Logarithm and exponential
Let be the multiplicative group of positive real numbers, and let be the additive group of real numbers.
The
The identities and show that and are inverses of each other. Since is a homomorphism that has an inverse that is also a homomorphism, is an isomorphism of groups.
The function is an isomorphism which translates multiplication of positive real numbers into addition of real numbers. This facility makes it possible to multiply real numbers using a
Integers modulo 6
Consider the group the integers from 0 to 5 with addition modulo 6. Also consider the group the ordered pairs where the x coordinates can be 0 or 1, and the y coordinates can be 0, 1, or 2, where addition in the x-coordinate is modulo 2 and addition in the y-coordinate is modulo 3.
These structures are isomorphic under addition, under the following scheme:
For example, which translates in the other system as
Even though these two groups "look" different in that the sets contain different elements, they are indeed isomorphic: their structures are exactly the same. More generally, the direct product of two cyclic groups and is isomorphic to if and only if m and n are
Relation-preserving isomorphism
If one object consists of a set X with a binary relation R and the other object consists of a set Y with a binary relation S then an isomorphism from X to Y is a bijective function such that:[1]
S is
For example, R is an ordering ≤ and S an ordering then an isomorphism from X to Y is a bijective function such that
If then this is a relation-preserving automorphism.
Applications
In algebra, isomorphisms are defined for all algebraic structures. Some are more specifically studied; for example:
- invertible matrices.
- Group isomorphisms between groups; the classification of isomorphism classes of finite groups is an open problem.
- Ring isomorphism between rings.
- Field isomorphisms are the same as ring isomorphism between field automorphisms is an important part of Galois theory.
Just as the automorphisms of an algebraic structure form a group, the isomorphisms between two algebras sharing a common structure form a heap. Letting a particular isomorphism identify the two structures turns this heap into a group.
In
In
In mathematical analysis, an isomorphism between two Hilbert spaces is a bijection preserving addition, scalar multiplication, and inner product.
In early theories of logical atomism, the formal relationship between facts and true propositions was theorized by Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein to be isomorphic. An example of this line of thinking can be found in Russell's Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy.
In cybernetics, the good regulator or Conant–Ashby theorem is stated "Every good regulator of a system must be a model of that system". Whether regulated or self-regulating, an isomorphism is required between the regulator and processing parts of the system.
Category theoretic view
In category theory, given a category C, an isomorphism is a morphism that has an inverse morphism that is, and For example, a bijective linear map is an isomorphism between vector spaces, and a bijective continuous function whose inverse is also continuous is an isomorphism between topological spaces, called a homeomorphism.
Two categories C and D are isomorphic if there exist functors and which are mutually inverse to each other, that is, (the identity functor on D) and (the identity functor on C).
Isomorphism vs. bijective morphism
In a
Relation with equality
In certain areas of mathematics, notably category theory, it is valuable to distinguish between equality on the one hand and isomorphism on the other.[2] Equality is when two objects are exactly the same, and everything that is true about one object is true about the other, while an isomorphism implies everything that is true about a designated part of one object's structure is true about the other's. For example, the sets
- while another is
and no one isomorphism is intrinsically better than any other.[note 1][note 2] On this view and in this sense, these two sets are not equal because one cannot consider them identical: one can choose an isomorphism between them, but that is a weaker claim than identity—and valid only in the context of the chosen isomorphism.
Another example is more formal and more directly illustrates the motivation for distinguishing equality from isomorphism: the distinction between a
This corresponds to transforming a
This leads to a third notion, that of a
However, there is a case where the distinction between natural isomorphism and equality is usually not made. That is for the objects that may be characterized by a universal property. In fact, there is a unique isomorphism, necessarily natural, between two objects sharing the same universal property. A typical example is the set of real numbers, which may be defined through infinite decimal expansion, infinite binary expansion, Cauchy sequences, Dedekind cuts and many other ways. Formally, these constructions define different objects which are all solutions with the same universal property. As these objects have exactly the same properties, one may forget the method of construction and consider them as equal. This is what everybody does when referring to "the set of the real numbers". The same occurs with quotient spaces: they are commonly constructed as sets of equivalence classes. However, referring to a set of sets may be counterintuitive, and so quotient spaces are commonly considered as a pair of a set of undetermined objects, often called "points", and a surjective map onto this set.
If one wishes to distinguish between an arbitrary isomorphism (one that depends on a choice) and a natural isomorphism (one that can be done consistently), one may write for an
Generally, saying that two objects are equal is reserved for when there is a notion of a larger (ambient) space that these objects live in. Most often, one speaks of equality of two subsets of a given set (as in the integer set example above), but not of two objects abstractly presented. For example, the 2-dimensional unit sphere in 3-dimensional space
In the context of category theory, objects are usually at most isomorphic—indeed, a motivation for the development of category theory was showing that different constructions in
See also: homotopy type theory, in which isomorphisms can be treated as kinds of equality.
See also
- Bisimulation
- Equivalence relation
- Heap (mathematics)
- Isometry
- Isomorphism class
- Isomorphism theorem
- Universal property
- Coherent isomorphism
Notes
- ^ have a conventional order, namely alphabetical order, and similarly 1, 2, 3 have the order from the integers, and thus one particular isomorphism is "natural", namely
More formally, as sets these are isomorphic, but not naturally isomorphic (there are multiple choices of isomorphism), while as ordered sets they are naturally isomorphic (there is a unique isomorphism, given above), sincefinite total orders are uniquely determined up to unique isomorphism by cardinality. This intuition can be formalized by saying that any two finiteleast elementof the first to the least element of the second, the least element of what remains in the first to the least element of what remains in the second, and so forth, but in general, pairs of sets of a given finite cardinality are not naturally isomorphic because there is more than one choice of map—except if the cardinality is 0 or 1, where there is a unique choice.
- ^ In fact, there are precisely different isomorphisms between two sets with three elements. This is equal to the number of automorphisms of a given three-element set (which in turn is equal to the order of the symmetric group on three letters), and more generally one has that the set of isomorphisms between two objects, denoted is a torsorfor the automorphism group of A, and also a torsor for the automorphism group of B. In fact, automorphisms of an object are a key reason to be concerned with the distinction between isomorphism and equality, as demonstrated in the effect of change of basis on the identification of a vector space with its dual or with its double dual, as elaborated in the sequel.
- ^ Being precise, the identification of the complex numbers with the real plane,
depends on a choice of one can just as easily choose which yields a different identification—formally,complex conjugationis an automorphism—but in practice one often assumes that one has made such an identification.
References
- ISBN 9780821834138.
- ^ Mazur 2007
Further reading
- Mazur, Barry (12 June 2007), When is one thing equal to some other thing? (PDF)