String diagrams for symmetric powers I: In symmetric monoidal ℚ_≥ 0-linear categories
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Symmetric powers are an important notion in mathematics, computer science and physics. In mathematics, they are used to build symmetric algebras, in computer science, to build free exponential modalities of linear logic and in physics, Fock spaces. We study symmetric powers through the lens of category theory. We focus here on the simpler case where nonnegative rational scalars are available ie. we study symmetric powers in symmetric monoidal ℚ_≥ 0-linear categories. Among the developments, a main point is the introduction of the notion of binomial graded bimonoid and the associated string diagrams which characterize symmetric powers in this setting.
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