[Math] Purely categorical definition of Hausdorff space

category-theorygeneral-topology

I would like to be able to look at the category Top and, not knowing anything about the "internals" of the objects (i.e. topological spaces), be able to identify which ones are Hausdorff and which aren't.

You can get most of the way there with the following definition of the Hausdorff axiom:

The diagonal $\Delta = \{ (x,x) | x \in X \}$ is closed as a subset of the product space $X \times X$

The "diagonal" can be defined categorically (i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagonal_morphism), but it's the "closed" that's giving me trouble. Given the diagonal morphism in the product setup, how can we tell via arrows/some universal property that this arrow (or the embedded subobject?) is "closed"?

My end goal here is to apply this notion to the category of pre-varieties to identify varieties in this category.

References:

  1. https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/Hausdorff+space#BeyondTopologicalSpaces
  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_of_topological_spaces

Best Answer

This answer may not be in the spirit of the question, but I think it's worth noting.

The usual definition of Hausdorff uses the notions "point" and "open sets". But both of these notions can be expressed in the language of categories: a point of $X$ is an arrow from the one-point space $1\to X$, and an open set of $X$ is an arrow from $X$ to the SierpiƄski space $X\to S$. So you can translate the usual definition to the language of categories.

Recall that $S=\{0,1\}$ with open sets $\varnothing$, $\{1\}$, and $S$. Overloading notation, write $1$ for the arrow $1\to S$ mapping the unique point of $1$ to $1$.

$X$ is Hausdorff if and only if: for every pair of arrows $p_1\neq p_2\colon 1 \to X$, there is a pair of arrows $u_1,u_2\colon X\to S$ such that (1) $u_1\circ p_1 = u_2\circ p_2 = 1$, and (2) there is no arrow $q\colon 1\to X$ such that $u_1\circ q=u_2\circ q=1$.

Related Question