ct.category theory - Understanding the etale space construction from a formal viewpoint

Here is a sketch of why I think the condition that $Y$ is a local homeomorphism over $X$ should be sufficient for the counit to be a homeomorphism. I haven't worked out the converse yet.

For a presheaf $F in Set^{mathcal{O}(X)^{op}}$, the formula for the left Kan extension should be

$$L(F) = mathrm{colim}_{y(U) rightarrow F} U$$ where $y : mathcal{O}(X) rightarrow Set^{mathcal{O}(X)^{op}}$ is the Yoneda embedding. By Yoneda's lemma, the indexing category for the colimit is exactly the category of elements of $F$ which I will write as $int F$.

Now, consider the case where $F = Gamma_Y$ for some space $p: Y rightarrow X$ and assume that $p$ is a local homeomorphism. We have $Gamma_Y(U) = {sigma : U rightarrow Y | p circ sigma = mathrm{id}_U }$. So the objects in the category $int Gamma_Y$ are exactly the sections over the various open sets of $X$, and the morphisms are given by restriction of sections. I'll write $d(sigma)$ for the domain of a given section.

Our Kan extension formula becomes

$$L(Gamma_Y) = mathrm{colim}_{sigma in int Gamma_Y} d(sigma)$$ From here it's easy to see what the counit is: since our object is given by a colimit, it suffices to construct a map $d(sigma) rightarrow Y$ for each $sigma in int Gamma_Y$. But clearly $sigma$ itself qualifies.

Now choose an open covering ${V_alpha}$ of $Y$ such that $p$ restricts to a homeomorphism on each $V_alpha$. We then have a collection ${sigma_alpha : p(V_alpha) rightarrow V_alpha}$ of sections by choosing the inverse to each restriction. My claim would be that this collection is cofinal (or final? I can never remember which) in the category $int Gamma_Y$ so that we can restrict our colimit to just this subcategory. Notice that in this case, the components of the counit map above are homeomorphisms.

Moreover, this subcategory should also be cofinal in $mathcal{O}(Y)$ by associating $sigma_alpha$ with the open set $V_alpha$. Then the fact that the counit is a homeomorphism should be the statement that a topological space is the colimit of any of its open coverings.

Is this along the lines of what you were thinking?

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