Slice of opposite category equivalent to coslice of category?

Slice and coslice categories in a category $C$ both admit a forgetful functor to $C$, which is one way to convince yourself that it's the second one: we have

$$C^{op}/c \cong (c/C)^{op}.$$

These categories both admit a forgetful functor to $C^{op}$.

But your hope is still fine: a functor $F : C^{op}/b \to C^{op}/a$ is the same thing as a functor $F : (b/C)^{op} \to (a/C)^{op}$, which is in turn the same thing as a functor $F^{op} : b/C \to a/C$. Taking opposite categories doesn't flip functors around (it flips natural transformations).


Guess your out of luck indeed it is true that $(A/\mathcal C)^\text{op} \cong \mathcal C^\text{op}/A$

The isomorphism between these two categories is given by $$F \colon (A/\mathcal C)^\text{op} \to C^\text{op}/A$$

  • where $$F(f) = f$$ for every $f \colon A \to X$ in $\mathcal C$

  • and $$F(\alpha)=\alpha$$ for every $\alpha \colon f \to g$ in $(A/\mathcal C)[f,g]$, with $f \colon A \to X$ and $g \colon A \to Y$.

This functor is clearly well defined on objects because $f \colon A \to X$, that is an object of $A/\mathcal C$, is also an object of $\mathcal C^\text{op}/A$.

On the other hand if $\alpha \in (A/\mathcal C)[f,g]$, with $f \colon A \to X$ and $g \colon A \to Y$ in $\mathcal C$, then $\alpha \colon X \to Y$ and $g=\alpha\circ f$ in $\mathcal C$. From this, since $$g=\alpha\circ f=f \circ^\text{op} \alpha$$ it follows that $\alpha \in (\mathcal C^\text{op}/A)[g,f]$ (this shows that the map is contravariant, that is that $F$ is a map from the graph $(A/\mathcal C)^\text{op}$ to $\mathcal C^\text{op}/A$).

Functoriality follows by simple computations and this is an isomorphism since it is bijective both on the objects and the morphisms.