A natural transformation from
to
, for functors
between categories
and
, consists of a family
of morphisms
in
which are indexed by the objects
of
so that, for each morphism
between objects in
, the equality
holds. The elements are called the components of the natural transformation.
If all the components are isomorphisms in
,
then
is called a natural isomorphism between
and
.
In this case, one writes
.