Another Approach to Topological Descent Theory

In the category Top of topological spaces and continuous functions, we prove that surjective maps which are descent morphisms with respect to the class E of continuous bijections are exactly the descent morphisms, providing a new characterization of the latter in terms of subfibrations E(X) of the basic fibration given by Top/X which are, essentially, complete lattices. Also effective descent morphisms are characterized in terms of effective morphisms with respect to continuous bijections. For classes E satisfying suitable conditions, we show that the class of effective descent morphisms coincides with the one of effective E-descent morphisms.