Grothendieck quantaloids for allegories of enriched categories

Abstract

For any small involutive quantaloid Q we define, in terms of symmetric quantaloid-enriched categories, an involutive quantaloid Rel(Q) of Q-sheaves and relations, and a category Sh(Q) of Q-sheaves and functions; the latter is equivalent to the category of symmetric maps in the former. We prove that Rel(Q) is the category of relations in a topos if and only if Q is a modular, locally localic and weakly semi-simple quantaloid; in this case we call Q a Grothendieck quantaloid. It follows that Sh(Q) is a Grothendieck topos whenever Q is a Grothendieck quantaloid. Any locale L is a Grothendieck quantale, and Sh(L) is the topos of sheaves on L. Any small quantaloid of closed cribles is a Grothendieck quantaloid, and if Q is the quantaloid of closed cribles in a Grothendieck site (C,J) then Sh(Q) is equivalent to the topos Sh(C,J). Any inverse quantal frame is a Grothendieck quantale, and if O(G) is the inverse quantal frame naturally associated with an \'etale groupoid G then Sh(O(G)) is the classifying topos of G.Comment: 28 pages, final versio