Star-regularity and regular completions

In this paper we establish a new characterisation of star-regular categories, using a property of internal reflexive graphs, which is suggested by a recent result due to O. Ngaha Ngaha and the first author. We show that this property is, in a suitable sense, invariant under regular completion of a category in the sense of A. Carboni and E.M. Vitale. Restricting to pointed categories, where star-regularity becomes normality in the sense of the second author, this reveals an unusual behaviour of the exactness property of normality (i.e. the property that regular epimorphisms are normal epimorphisms) compared to other closely related exactness properties studied in categorical algebra.     

Cartesian closed initial completions

We construct cartesian closed extensions of concrete categories with special (topological) properties. As a consequence we find a necessary and sufficient condition for a concrete category to have finitely productive, cartesian closed initial completion. Finally, we exhibit a topological category, not satisfying this condition; this gives a negative answer to the problem of Herrlich and Nel whether each topological category has a cartesian closed topological bull [6]. These results have been announced in [1].     

Stable equivalence and rings whose modules are a direct sum of finitely generated modules

The representation theory of a ring Δ has been studied by examining the category of contravariant (additive) functors from the category of finitely generated left Δ-modules to the category of abelian groups. Closely connected with the representation theory of a ring is the study of stable equivalence, which is a relaxing of the notion of Morita equivalence. Here we relate two stably equivalent rings via their respective functor categories and examine left artinian rings with the property that every left Δ-module is a direct sum of finitely generated modules.     

Categorical Generalization of a Universal Domain

J. Adámek defined SC categories as a categorical generalization of Scott domains. Namely, an SC category is finitely accessible, has an initial object and is boundedly cocomplete (each diagram with a compatible cocone has a colimit). SC categories are proved to serve well as a basis for the computer language semantics.The purpose of this paper is to generalize the concept of a universal Scott domain to a universal SC category. We axiomatize properties of subcategories of finitely presentable objects of SC categories (generalizing thus semilattices of compact elements of Scott domains). The categories arising are called FCC (finitely consistently cocomplete) categories. It is shown that there exists a universal FCC category, i.e., such that every FCC category may be FCC embedded into it. The result is an application of a general procedure introduced 30 years ago by V. Trnková.     

Lex colimits

Many kinds of categorical structure require the existence of finite limits, of colimits of some specified type, and of “exactness” conditions relating the finite limits and the specified colimits. Some examples are the notions of regular, Barr-exact, lextensive, coherent, or adhesive category. We introduce a general notion of exactness, of which each of the structures listed above, and others besides, are particular instances. The notion can be understood as a form of cocompleteness “in the lex world”—more precisely, in the 2-category of finitely complete categories and finite-limit-preserving functors.     

Relative Regular Objects in Categories

We define the concept of a regular object with respect to another object in an arbitrary category. We present basic properties of regular objects and we study this concept in the special cases of abelian categories and locally finitely generated Grothendieck categories. Applications are given for categories of comodules over a coalgebra and for categories of graded modules, and a link to the theory of generalized inverses of matrices is presented. Some of the techniques we use are new, since dealing with arbitrary categories allows us to pass to the dual category.      

A recollement construction of Gorenstein derived categories

We first give an equivalence between the derived category of a locally finitely presented category and the derived category of contravariant functors from its finitely presented subcategory to the category of abelian groups, in the spirit of Krause’s work [Math. Ann., 2012, 353: 765–781]. Then we provide a criterion for the existence of recollement of derived categories of functor categories, which shows that the recollement structure may be induced by a proper morphism defined in finitely presented subcategories. This criterion is then used to construct a recollement of derived category of Gorenstein injective modules over CM-finite 2-Gorenstein artin algebras.     

Exactness of direct limits for abelian categories with an injective cogenerator

We prove that the exactness of direct limits in an abelian category with products and an injective cogenerator J is equivalent to a condition on J which is well-known to characterize pure-injectivity in module categories, and we describe an application of this result to the tilting theory. We derive our result as a consequence of a more general characterization of when inverse limits in the Eilenberg–Moore category of a monad on the category of sets preserve regular epimorphisms.     

Homological Finiteness Conditions for Groups,Monoids, and Algebras

Let ? be an additive category and 𝒞 a full subcategory with split idempotents, and closed under isomorphic images and finite direct sums. We give conditions on ? and 𝒞 implying that ? embeds into an abelian category, so that the objects of 𝒞 turn into injective objects. This construction generalizes the embedding of exactly definable categories into locally coherent categories, while the dual construction generalizes the embedding of finitely accessible categories into Grothendieck categories with a family of finitely generated projective generators. As applications, we characterize exactly definable categories through intrinsic properties and study those locally coherent categories whose fp-injective objects form a Grothendieck category.     

V-Categories: Applications to Graded Rings

Motivated by the study of V-rings, we introduce the concept of V-category, as a Grothendieck category with the property that any simple object is injective. We present basic properties of V-categories, and we study this concept in the special case of locally finitely generated categories, for instance the category R-gr of all graded left R-modules, where R is a graded ring. We use the characterizations of V-categories in the study of graded V-rings. Since V-rings are closely related to Von Neumann regular rings (in the commutative case these classes of rings coincide), the last part of the article is devoted to graded regular rings.     

Yetter-Drinfeld modules over weak bialgebras

We discuss properties of Yetter-Drinfeld modules over weak bialgebras over commutative rings. The categories of left-left, left-right, right-left and right-right Yetter-Drinfeld modules over a weak Hopf algebra are isomorphic as braided monoidal categories. Yetter-Drinfeld modules can be viewed as weak Doi-Hopf modules, and, a fortiori, as weak entwined modules. IfH is finitely generated and projective, then we introduce the Drinfeld double using duality results between entwining structures and smash product structures, and show that the category of Yetter-Drinfeld modules is isomorphic to the category of modules over the Drinfeld double. The category of finitely generated projective Yetter-Drinfeld modules over a weak Hopf algebra has duality.     

Module categories,weak Hopf algebras and modular invariants

We develop a theory of module categories over monoidal categories (this is a straightforward categorization of modules over rings). As applications we show that any semisimple monoidal category with finitely many simple objects is equivalent to the category of representations of a weak Hopf algebra (theorem of T. Hayashi) and we classify module categories over the fusion category of sl(2) at a positive integer level where we meet once again the ADE classification pattern.     

On Direct Summands of Homological Functors on Length Categories

We show that direct summands of certain additive functors arising as bifunctors with a fixed argument in an abelian category are again of that form whenever the fixed argument has finite length or, more generally, satisfies the descending chain condition on images of nested endomorphisms. In particular, this provides a positive answer to a conjecture of M. Auslander in the case of categories of finite modules over artin algebras. This implies that the covariant Ext functors are the only injectives in the category of defect-zero finitely presented functors on such categories.     

Algebraic logoi

We introduce normal cores, as well as the more general action cores, in the context of a semi-abelian category, and further generalise those to split extension cores in the context of a homological category. We prove that, if the category is moreover well-powered with (small) joins, then the existence of split extension cores is equivalent to the condition that the change-of-base functors in the fibration of points are geometric. We call a finitely complete category that satisfies this condition an algebraic logos. We give examples of such categories, compare them with algebraically coherent ones, and study equivalent conditions as well as stability under common categorical operations.     

A Cartan-Eilenberg approach to homotopical algebra

In this paper we propose an approach to homotopical algebra where the basic ingredient is a category with two classes of distinguished morphisms: strong and weak equivalences. These data determine the cofibrant objects by an extension property analogous to the classical lifting property of projective modules. We define a Cartan-Eilenberg category as a category with strong and weak equivalences such that there is an equivalence of categories between its localisation with respect to weak equivalences and the relative localisation of the subcategory of cofibrant objects with respect to strong equivalences. This equivalence of categories allows us to extend the classical theory of derived additive functors to this non additive setting. The main examples include Quillen model categories and categories of functors defined on a category endowed with a cotriple (comonad) and taking values on a category of complexes of an abelian category. In the latter case there are examples in which the class of strong equivalences is not determined by a homotopy relation. Among other applications of our theory, we establish a very general acyclic models theorem.     

The Exchange Property in Grothendieck Categories: Applications

We introduce the concept of an object with the (finite) exchange property in an arbitrary Grothendieck category, and we present the basic properties of such an object. Applications are given for categories of graded modules and for categories of comodules over a coalgebra. Among other results, it is proved that an arbitrary coalgebra 𝒞 over a field has the finite exchange property.     

How accessible are categories of algebras?

For locally finitely presentable categories it is well known that categories of F-algebras, where F is a finitary endofunctor, are also locally finitely presentable. We prove that this generalizes to locally finitely multipresentable categories. But it fails, in general, for finitely accessible categories: we even present an example of a strongly finitary functor F (one that preserves finitely presentable objects) whose category of F-algebras is not finitely accessible. On the other hand, categories of F-algebras are proved to be ω₁-accessible for all strongly finitary functors—and it is an open problem whether this holds for all finitary functors.     

Free Factorizations

Given any morphism, we construct extensions of the original category in which this morphism admits certain factorizations, in particular a (retraction, section)-factorization. To this end, we solve the word problem for a certain type of systems of generators and relations for categories. This also enables us to prove preservation properties for the said extensions, e.g. preservation of a pair of diagonalizing classes of epimorphisms and monomorphisms.Iterating such extension processes, we obtain factorizable extensions of categories; in particular, we construct a free proper factorization structure on a given category, which leads to a characterization of preimages of proper factorization structures under full embeddings. As a further application, we characterize an absoluteness property regarding factorizations of functorial images of a morphism.