Closure operators I

Closure operators in an (E, M)-category X are introduced as concrete endofunctors of the comma category whose objects are the elements of M. Various kinds of closure operators are studied. There is a Galois equivalence between the conglomerate of idempotent and weakly hereditary closure operators of X and the conglomerate of subclasses of M which are part of a factorization system. There is a one-to-one correspondence between the class of regular closure operators and the class of strongly epireflective subcategories of X. Every closure operators admits an idempotent hull and a weakly hereditary core.Various examples of additive closure operators in Top are given. For abelian categories standard closure operators are considered. It is shown that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the class of standard closure operators and the class of preradicals. Idempotent, weakly hereditary, standard closure operators correspond to idempotent radicals (= torsion theories).