Category of manifolds

In mathematics, the category of manifolds, often denoted Man^p, is the category whose objects are manifolds of smoothness class C^p and whose morphisms are p-times continuously differentiable maps. This is a category because the composition of two C^p maps is again continuous and of class C^p.

One is often interested only in C^p-manifolds modelled on spaces in a fixed category A, and the category of such manifolds is denoted Man^p(A). Similarly, the category of C^p-manifolds modelled on a fixed space E is denoted Man^p(E).

One may also speak of the category of smooth manifolds, Man^∞, or the category of analytic manifolds, Man^ω.

Man^p is a concrete category

Like many categories, the category Man^p is a concrete category, meaning its objects are sets with additional structure (i.e. a topology and an equivalence class of atlases of charts defining a C^p-differentiable structure) and its morphisms are functions preserving this structure. There is a natural forgetful functor

U : Man^p → Top

to the category of topological spaces which assigns to each manifold the underlying topological space and to each p-times continuously differentiable function the underlying continuous function of topological spaces. Similarly, there is a natural forgetful functor

U′ : Man^p → Set

to the category of sets which assigns to each manifold the underlying set and to each p-times continuously differentiable function the underlying function.

References

• Lang, Serge (1972). Differential manifolds. Reading, Mass.–London–Don Mills, Ont.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Inc.