# nLab bo functor

A functor is called bijective on objects, or bo, if it is, well, bijective on objects. One reason bo functors are important is because together with full and faithful (ff) functors they form an orthogonal factorization system on Cat; see bo-ff factorization system. This factorization system can also be constructed using a generalized kernel.

To be less evil, one could require that the functor be bijective on objects only up to isomorphism; that is, it is essentially surjective and full on isomorphisms. However, from the point of view of factorization systems, the non-evil version of a bo functor is nothing more or less than an essentially surjective functor, since essentially surjective functors and ff functors form a bicategorical factorization system on the bicategory $Cat$.

Proposition. A functor is bijective on objects if and only if it exhibits its codomain as the (2-categorical) codescent object of some simplicial category.

This can be generalized to any regular 2-category.

Revised on December 15, 2011 20:00:39 by Stephan Alexander Spahn (92.105.202.49)