An abstract characterization of Thompson's group F

Abstract

We show that Thompson's group F is the symmetry group of the "generic idempotent". That is, take the monoidal category freely generated by an object A and an isomorphism A \otimes A --> A; then F is the group of automorphisms of A.

17 pages. Revised and improved; final journal version. Title changed

References in corpus (2)

• The Algebra of Strand Splitting. I. A Braided Version of Thompson's Group V
• Geometric presentations for Thompson's groups