Isomorphism between trees and forests

210 Views Asked by At

Let $FF$ be the category of forests, whose objects are strictly partially ordered sets such that for a forest $F$, the set $\{y\in F\mid y<x\}$ is a finite linear order for any $x\in F$, whose cardinality is called the level of $x$, and whose morphisms are the level-preserving and order-preserving functions. The trees form a full subcategory $TT$ of $FF$, where a forest is a tree iff there is exactly one element of level $0$. These are basically acyclic directed graphs (the trees), or disjoint unions of trees (the forests). Now I have proven that by cutting the root of a tree one obtains a functor from TT to FF that is an fully faithful and essentially surjective, and hence defines an equivalence of categories, so these categories are equivalent. But I was wondering: are they also isomorphic? I feel like the answer is no, but I can't prove it. Any thoughts or hints?

For (some of) the comments below: I am not asking whether this functor is an isomorphism, because it clearly isn't, but how to show that there exists no functor that is an isomorphism.

1

There are 1 best solutions below

0
On BEST ANSWER

There is only one initial object in $FF$, the empty forest $\varnothing$. However, in $TT$, any singleton $\{x\}$ is an initial object. An isomorphism of categories would restrict to a bijection between the set of initial objects in $FF$ and the set of initial objects in $TT$, which doesn't exist.