Groups as categories

Recall that to any group we can associate a category BG that has a unique object, an arrow for each element of G, and arrow composition given by the group law in G. (See a bit more here.)

  1. Show there is a correspondence[1] between groups and one-object categories in which every arrow is invertible.
  2. Suppose G and H are groups. Show that group morphisms ϕ:G→H correspond[2] to functors Φ:BG→BH.
  3. Recall that a permutation representation of G is a group morphism ϕ:G→SX, where SX is the permutation group on a set X. Show that permutation representations of G correspond to functors BG→Set.
  4. Suppose ϕ,ψ:G→H are group morphisms, with corresponding functors Φ,Ψ:BG→BH. Show there is a natural transformation Φ⇒Ψ if and only if ϕ and ψ are conjugate, i.e., there is an element h∈H such that ψ(g)=h(ϕ(g))h−1 for all g∈G.

  1. You can turn this into a bijection if you are willing to talk about isomorphism classes of groups and the like. ↩︎

  2. Following the previous footnote, you can turn this into an equivalence of certain categories. ↩︎