Free Doubly-Infinitary Distributive Categories are Cartesian Closed

Abstract

We delve into the concept of categories with products that distribute over coproducts, which we call doubly-infinitary distributive categories. We show various instances of doubly-infinitary distributive categories aiming for a comparative analysis with established notions such as extensivity, infinitary distributiveness, and cartesian closedness. Our exploration reveals that this condition represents a substantial extension beyond the classical understanding of infinitary distributive categories. Our main theorem establishes that free doubly-infinitary distributive categories are cartesian closed. We end the paper with remarks on non-canonical isomorphisms, open questions, and future work.