When is the diagonal functor Frobenius?

Abstract

Given a complete, cocomplete category $\mathcal C$, we investigate the problem of describing those small categories $I$ such that the diagonal functor $\Delta:\mathcal C\to {\rm Functors}(I,\mathcal C)$ is a Frobenius functor. This condition can be rephrased by saying that the limits and the colimits of functors $I\to\mathcal C$ are naturally isomorphic. We find necessary conditions on $I$ for a certain class of categories $\mathcal C$, and, as an application, we give both necessary and sufficient conditions in the two special cases $\mathcal C={\bf Set}$ or $_R\mathcal M$, the category of left modules over a ring $R$.