Abstract:

The classical Fra?ss? construction is a method of taking a direct limit of a family of finite models of a language provided the family fulfills certain amalgamation conditions. The limit is a countable model of the same language which can be characterized by its (injective) homogeneity and universality with respect to the initial family of models. A standard example is the family of finite linear orders for which the Fra?ss? limit is the rational numbers with the usual ordering.

We present this classical construction via category theory, and within this context we introduce the dual construction. This respectively constitutes the Fra?ss? colimits and limits indicated in the title. We provide several examples.

We then present the projective Fra?ss? limit as a special case of the dual construction, and as such it is the categorical dual to the classical (injective) Fra?ss? limit. In this dualization we use a notion of model theoretic structure which has a topological ingredient. This results in the countable limit structures being replaced by structures which are zero-dimensional, compact, second countable spaces with the property that the relations are closed and the functions are continuous.

We apply the theory of projective Fra?ss? limits to the pseudo-arc by first representing the pseudo-arc as a natural quotient of a projective Fra?ss? limit. Using this representation we derive topological properties of the pseudo-arc as consequences of the properties of projective Fra?ss? limits. We thereby obtain a new proof of Mioduszewski's result that the pseudo-arc is surjectively universal among chainable continua, and also a homogeneity theorem for the pseudo-arc which is a strengthening of a result due to Lewis and Smith. We also find a new characterization of the pseudo-arc via the homogeneity property.

We continue with further applications of these methods to a class of continua known as pseudo-solenoids, and achieve analogous results for the universal pseudo-solenoid.