Direct limit

In mathematics, a direct limit (also called inductive limit) is a colimit of a "directed family of objects".

In this section objects are understood to be sets with a given algebraic structure such as groups, rings, modules (over a fixed ring), algebras (over a fixed field), etc. With this in mind, homomorphisms are understood in the corresponding setting (group homomorphisms, etc.).

Let ${\displaystyle \langle I,\leq \rangle }$ be a directed set. Let ${\displaystyle \{A_{i}:i\in I\}}$ be a family of objects indexed by ${\displaystyle I\,}$ and ${\displaystyle f_{ij}\colon A_{i}\rightarrow A_{j}}$ be a homomorphism for all ${\displaystyle i\leq j}$ with the following properties:

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