Characterizing Van Kampen Squares via Descent Data

Categories in which cocones satisfy certain exactness conditions w.r.t. pullbacks are subject to current research activities in theoretical computer science. Usually, exactness is expressed in terms of properties of the pullback functor associated with the cocone. Even in the case of non-exactness, researchers in model semantics and rewriting theory inquire an elementary characterization of the image of this functor. In this paper we will investigate this question in the special case where the cocone is a cospan, i.e. part of a Van Kampen square. The use of Descent Data as the dominant categorical tool yields two main results: A simple condition which characterizes the reachable part of the above mentioned functor in terms of liftings of involved equivalence relations and (as a consequence) a necessary and sufficient condition for a pushout to be a Van Kampen square formulated in a purely algebraic manner.Comment: In Proceedings ACCAT 2012, arXiv:1208.430

Van Kampen Colimits and Path Uniqueness

Fibred semantics is the foundation of the model-instance pattern of software engineering. Software models can often be formalized as objects of presheaf topoi, i.e, categories of objects that can be represented as algebras as well as coalgebras, e.g., the category of directed graphs. Multimodeling requires to construct colimits of models, decomposition is given by pullback. Compositionality requires an exact interplay of these operations, i.e., diagrams must enjoy the Van Kampen property. However, checking the validity of the Van Kampen property algorithmically based on its definition is often impossible. In this paper we state a necessary and sufficient yet efficiently checkable condition for the Van Kampen property to hold in presheaf topoi. It is based on a uniqueness property of path-like structures within the defining congruence classes that make up the colimiting cocone of the models. We thus add to the statement "Being Van Kampen is a Universal Property" by Heindel and Soboci\'{n}ski the fact that the Van Kampen property reveals a presheaf-based structural uniqueness feature