Integrals along bimonoid homomorphisms

Abstract

We introduce a notion of an integral along a bimonoid homomorphism as a simultaneous generalization of the integral and cointegral of bimonoids. The purpose of this paper is to characterize an existence of a specific integral, called a normalized generator integral, along a bimonoid homomorphism in terms of the kernel and cokernel of the homomorphism. We introduce a notion of a volume on an abelian category as a generalization of the dimension of vector spaces and the order of abelian groups. In applications, we show that there exists a nontrivial volume partially defined on a category of bicommutative Hopf monoids. The volume yields a notion of Fredholm homomorphisms between bicommutative Hopf monoids, which gives an analogue of the Fredholm index theory. This paper gives a technical preliminary of our subsequent paper about a construction of TQFTs.