Equivalence of categories

In category theory, an abstract branch of mathematics, an equivalence of categories is a relation between two categories that establishes that these categories are "essentially the same". There are numerous examples of categorical equivalences from many areas of mathematics. Establishing an equivalence involves demonstrating strong similarities between the mathematical structures concerned. In some cases, these structures may appear to be unrelated at a superficial or intuitive level, making the notion fairly powerful: it creates the opportunity to "translate" theorems between different kinds of mathematical structures, knowing that the essential meaning of those theorems is preserved under the translation.
If a category is equivalent to the opposite (or dual) of another category then one speaks of
a duality of categories, and says that the two categories are dually equivalent.
An equivalence of categories consists of a functor between the involved categories, which is required to have an "inverse" functor. However, in contrast to the situation common for isomorphisms in an algebraic setting, the composite of the functor and its "inverse" is not necessarily the identity mapping. Instead it is sufficient that each object be "naturally isomorphic" to its image under this composition. Thus one may describe the functors as being "inverse up to isomorphism". There is indeed a concept of isomorphism of categories where a strict form of inverse functor is required, but this is of much less practical use than the "equivalence" concept.
Definition.
Formally, given two categories "C" and "D", an "equivalence of categories" consists of a functor "F" : "C" → "D", a functor "G" : "D" → "C", and two natural isomorphisms ε: "FG"→I"D" and η : I"C"→"GF". Here "FG": "D"→"D" and "GF": "C"→"C", denote the respective compositions of "F" and "G", and I"C": "C"→"C" and I"D": "D"→"D" denote the "identity functors" on "C" and "D", assigning each object and morphism to itself. If "F" and "G" are contravariant functors one speaks of a "duality of categories" instead.
One often does not specify all the above data. For instance, we say that the categories "C" and "D" are "equivalent" (respectively "dually equivalent") if there exists an equivalence (respectively duality) between them. Furthermore, we say that "F" "is" an equivalence of categories if an inverse functor "G" and natural isomorphisms as above exist. Note however that knowledge of "F" is usually not enough to reconstruct "G" and the natural isomorphisms: there may be many choices (see example below).
Equivalent characterizations.
A functor "F" : "C" → "D" yields an equivalence of categories if and only if it is simultaneously:
This is a quite useful and commonly applied criterion, because one does not have to explicitly construct the "inverse" "G" and the natural isomorphisms between "FG", "GF" and the identity functors. On the other hand, though the above properties guarantee the "existence" of a categorical equivalence (given a sufficiently strong version of the axiom of choice in the underlying set theory), the missing data is not completely specified, and often there are many choices. It is a good idea to specify the missing constructions explicitly whenever possible.
Due to this circumstance, a functor with these properties is sometimes called a weak equivalence of categories. (Unfortunately this conflicts with terminology from homotopy type theory.)
There is also a close relation to the concept of adjoint functors. The following statements are equivalent for functors "F" : "C" → "D" and "G" : "D" → "C":
One may therefore view an adjointness relation between two functors as expressing a "weaker form of equivalence" of categories. Assuming that the natural transformations for the adjunctions are given, all of these formulations allow for an explicit construction of the necessary data, and no choice principles are needed. The key property that one has to prove here is that the "counit" of an adjunction is an isomorphism if and only if the right adjoint is a full and faithful functor.
Properties.
As a rule of thumb, an equivalence of categories preserves all "categorical" concepts and properties. If "F" : "C" → "D" is an equivalence, then the following statements are all true:
Dualities "turn all concepts around": they turn initial objects into terminal objects, monomorphisms into epimorphisms, kernels into cokernels, limits into colimits etc.
If "F" : "C" → "D" is an equivalence of categories, and "G"1 and "G"2 are two inverses of "F", then "G"1 and "G"2 are naturally isomorphic.
If "F" : "C" → "D" is an equivalence of categories, and if "C" is a preadditive category (or additive category, or abelian category), then "D" may be turned into a preadditive category (or additive category, or abelian category) in such a way that "F" becomes an additive functor. On the other hand, any equivalence between additive categories is necessarily additive. (Note that the latter statement is not true for equivalences between preadditive categories.)
An auto-equivalence of a category "C" is an equivalence "F" : "C" → "C". The auto-equivalences of "C" form a group under composition if we consider two auto-equivalences that are naturally isomorphic to be identical. This group captures the essential "symmetries" of "C". (One caveat: if "C" is not a small category, then the auto-equivalences of "C" may form a proper class rather than a set.)