Selective Categories and Linear Canonical Relations

Abstract: A construction of Wehrheim and Woodward circumvents the problem that compositions of smooth canonical relations are not always smooth, building a category suitable for functorial quantization. To apply their construction to more examples, we introduce a notion of highly selective category, in which only certain morphisms and certain pairs of these morphisms are "good". We then apply this notion to the category $\mathbf{SLREL}$ of linear canonical relations and the result ${\rm WW}(\mathbf{SLREL})$ of our version of the WW construction, identifying the morphisms in the latter with pairs $(L,k)$ consisting of a linear canonical relation and a nonnegative integer. We put a topology on this category of indexed linear canonical relations for which composition is continuous, unlike the composition in $\mathbf{SLREL}$ itself. Subsequent papers will consider this category from the viewpoint of derived geometry and will concern quantum counterparts.