We examine the analogues for the respective categories of locales of two well-known results about regularity and effectiveness of some categories of spaces. We show that the category of compact regular locales is effective regular (=Barr-exact). We also show that the category of compactly generated Hausdorff locales is regular, provided that it is coreflective within Hausdorff locales. We do not appeal to the existence of points (which would render the two results trivial) but rely on the treatment of the subject by methods that are valid in the internal logic of a topos. On the course to the result about compactly generated locales we arrive at a generalization of a result of B. Day and R. Street, deriving regularity for a cocomplete category containing a dense regular subcategory closed under finite limits and colimits and satisfying a certain compatibility condition of pullbacks with appropriate colimits.
In analogy with the classical theory of filters, for fi\-nite\-ly complete or small cat\-e\-go\-ries, we provide the concepts of fil\-ter, $\mathfrak{G}$-neigh\-bor\-hood (short for "Grothendieck-neigh\-bor\-hood") and cover-neigh\-bor\-hood of points of such categories, with the goal of studying convergence, cluster point, closure of sieves and compactness on objects of that kind of categories. Finally, we study all these concepts in the category $\bf{Loc}$ of locales.
The main aim of this paper is to provide a description of neighbourhood operators in finitely complete categories with finite coproducts and a proper factorisation system such that the semilattice of admissible subobjects make a distributive complete lattice. The equivalence between neighbourhoods, Kuratowski interior operators and pseudo-frame sets is proved. Furthermore the categories of internal neighbourhoods is shown to be topological. Regular epimorphisms of categories of neighbourhoods are described and conditions ensuring hereditary regular epimorphisms are probed. It is shown the cate…
Any functor from the category of C*-algebras to the category of locales that assigns to each commutative C*-algebra its Gelfand spectrum must be trivial on algebras of nxn-matrices for n at least 3. The same obstruction applies to the Zariski, Stone, and Pierce spectra. The possibility of spectra in categories other than that of locales is briefly discussed.
We construct a homeomorphism between the compact regular locale of integrals on a Riesz space and the locale of (valuations) on its spectrum. In fact, we construct two geometric theories and show that they are biinterpretable. The constructions are elementary and tightly connected to the Riesz space structure.
For any small involutive quantaloid Q we define, in terms of symmetric quantaloid-enriched categories, an involutive quantaloid Rel(Q) of Q-sheaves and relations, and a category Sh(Q) of Q-sheaves and functions; the latter is equivalent to the category of symmetric maps in the former. We prove that Rel(Q) is the category of relations in a topos if and only if Q is a modular, locally localic and weakly semi-simple quantaloid; in this case we call Q a Grothendieck quantaloid. It follows that Sh(Q) is a Grothendieck topos whenever Q is a Grothendieck quantaloid. Any locale L is a Grothendieck qua…
Given a double category D such that D_0 has pushouts, we characterize oplax/lax adjunctions between D and Cospan(D_0) such that the right adjoint is normal and restricts to the identity on D_0, where Cospan(D_0) denotes the double category on D_0 whose vertical morphisms are cospans. We show that such a pair exists if and only if D has companions, conjoints, and 1-cotabulators. The right adjoints are induced by the companions and conjoints, and the left adjoints by the 1-cotabulators. The notion of a 1-cotabulator is a common generalization of the symmetric algebra of a module and Artin-Wraith…
$2$-star-permutable categories were introduced in a joint work with Z. Janelidze and A. Ursini as a common generalisation of regular Mal'tsev categories and of normal subtractive categories. In the present article we first characterise these categories in terms of what we call star-regular pushouts. We then show that the $3 \times 3$ Lemma characterising normal subtractive categories and the Cuboid Lemma characterising regular Mal'tsev categories are special instances of a more general homological lemma for star-exact sequences. We prove that $2$-star-permutability is equivalent to the validit…
We propose definitions of regular and exact (virtual) double categories, proving a number of results which parallel many basic results in the theory of regular and exact categories. We show that any regular virtual double category admits a factorization system which generalizes the factorization of a functor between categories into a bijective-on-objects functor followed by a fully-faithful functor. Finally, we show that our definition of exact double category is equivalent to an axiom proposed by Wood, and very closely related to the "tight Kleisli objects" studied by Garner and Shulman.
In this paper, we obtain a non-abelian analogue of Lubkin's embedding theorem for abelian categories. Our theorem faithfully embeds any small regular Mal'tsev category $\mathbb{C}$ in an $n$-th power of a particular locally finitely presentable regular Mal'tsev category. The embedding preserves and reflects finite limits, isomorphisms and regular epimorphisms, as in the case of Barr's embedding theorem for regular categories. Furthermore, we show that we can take $n$ to be the (cardinal) number of subobjects of the terminal object in $\mathbb{C}$.
Regular logic is the fragment of first order logic generated by $=$, $\top$, $\wedge$, and $\exists$. A key feature of this logic is that it is the minimal fragment required to express composition of binary relations; another is that it is the internal logic of regular categories. The link between these two facts is that in any regular category, one may construct a notion of binary relation using jointly-monic spans; this results in what is known as the bicategory of relations of the regular category. In this paper we provide a direct axiomatization of bicategories of relations, which we term …
We construct an exact completion for regular categories enriched in the cartesian closed category $\mathsf{Pos}$ of partially ordered sets and monotone functions by employing a suitable calculus of relations. We then characterize the embedding of any regular category into its completion and use this to obtain examples of concrete categories which arise as such completions. In particular, we prove that the exact completion in this enriched sense of both the categories of Stone and Priestley spaces is the category of compact ordered spaces of L. Nachbin. Finally, we consider the relationship bet…
Any functor from the category of C*-algebras to the category of locales that assigns to each commutative C*-algebra its Gelfand spectrum must be trivial on algebras of nxn-matrices for n at least 3. This obstruction also applies to other spectra such as those named after Zariski, Stone, and Pierce. We extend these no-go results to functors with values in (ringed) topological spaces, (ringed) toposes, schemes, and quantales. The possibility of spectra in other categories is discussed.
Normal monomorphisms in the sense of Bourn describe the equivalence classes of an internal equivalence relation. Although the definition is given in the fairly general setting of a category with finite limits, later investigations on this subject often focus on protomodular settings, where normality becomes a property. This paper clarifies the connections between internal equivalence relations and Bourn-normal monomorphisms in regular Mal'tesv categories with pushouts of split monomorphisms along arbitrary morphisms, whereas a full description is achieved for quasi-pointed regular Mal'tsev cat…
In a regular category $\mathbb E$, the direct image along a regular epimorphism $f$ of a preorder is not a preorder in general. In $Set$, its best preorder approximation is then its cocartesian image above $f$. In a regular category, the existence of such a cocartesian image above $f$ of a preorder $S$ is actually equivalent to the existence of the supremum $R[f]\vee S$ among the preorders. We investigate here some conditions ensuring the existence of these cocartesian images or equivalently of these suprema. They applied to two very dissimilar contexts: any topos $\mathbb E$ with suprema of c…
We prove that a regular category $\mathcal C$ is a Mal'tsev category if and only if a strong form of the denormalised $3 \times 3$ Lemma holds true in $\mathcal C$. In this version of the $3 \times 3$ Lemma, the vertical exact forks are replaced by pullbacks of regular epimorphisms along arbitrary morphisms. The shape of the diagram it determines suggests to call it the Cuboid Lemma. This new characterisation of regular categories that are Mal'tsev categories (= $2$-permutable) is similar to the one previously obtained for Goursat categories (= $3$-permutable). We also analyse the "relative" v…
We propose a new approach to S-protomodular categories in the sense of D. Bourn, N. Martins-Ferreira, A. Montoli, and M. Sobral. Instead of points (=split epimorphisms) it uses generalized points, which we define as composable pairs of morphisms whose composites are pullback stable regular epimorphisms. This approach is convenient in describing the connection between split and regular Schreier epimorphisms of monoids.
In universal algebra, it is well known that varieties admitting a majority term admit several Mal'tsev-type characterizations. The main aim of this paper is to establish categorical counterparts of some of these characterizations for regular categories. We prove a categorical version of Bergman's Double-projection Theorem: a regular category is a majority category if and only if every subobject $S$ of a finite product $A_1 \times A_2 \times \cdots \times A_n$ is uniquely determined by its two-fold projections. We also establish a categorical counterpart of the Pairwise Chinese Remainder Theore…
In this paper, we investigate the property (P) that finite products commute with arbitrary coequalizers in pointed categories. Examples of such categories include any regular unital or (pointed) majority category with coequalizers, as well as any pointed factor permutable category with coequalizers. We establish a Mal'tsev term condition characterizing pointed varieties of universal algebras satisfying (P). We then consider categories satisfying (P) locally, i.e., those categories for which every fibre $Pt_{\mathbb{C}}(X)$ of the fibration of points $π: Pt_{\mathbb{C}} \rightarrow \mathbb{C}$ …
Relative realizability toposes satisfy a universal property that involves regular functors to other categories. We use this universal property to define what relative realizability categories are, when based on other categories than of the topos of sets. This paper explains the property and gives a construction for relative realizability categories that works for arbitrary base Heyting categories. The universal property shows us some new geometric morphisms to relative realizability toposes too.
K. S. S. Nambooripad intoduced nornal categories to enable to describe the structure of regular semigroups fully. In this paper we describe the ideal categories of the regular semigroup $OX_n,$ of non-invertible order-preserving transformations on a finite chain $X_n=\{1\leq 2\leq \cdots \leq n \}$ which are normal categories. Further it is shown that the principal left ideal category of $OX_n$ as the power set category $P_o(X_n)$ of $OX_n$ and the principal right ideal category as $\prod_o(X_n)$ category of ordered partitions of $X_n$ and described the cone semigroup $T\mathscr L(OX_n)$ and p…
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.
By defining a closure operator on effective equivalence relations in a regular category $C$, it is possible to establish a bijective correspondence between these closure operators and the regular epireflective subcategories $L$ of $C$. When $C$ is an exact Goursat category this correspondence restricts to a bijection between the Birkhoff closure operators on effective equivalence relations and the Birkhoff subcategories of $C$. In this case it is possible to provide an explicit description of the closure, and to characterise the congruence distributive Goursat categories.
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 epimorph…
We show how the theory of (dual) strongly relative Rickart objects may be employed in order to study strongly relative regular objects and (dual) strongly relative Baer objects in abelian categories. For each of them, we prove general properties, we analyze the behaviour with respect to (co)products, and we study the transfer via functors. We also give applications to Grothendieck categories, (graded) module categories and comodule categories.
In this paper we study the structure of a class of categories having two operations which satisfy axioms analoguos to that of rings. Such categories are called "Ann - categories". We obtain the classification theorems for regular Ann - categories and Ann - functors by using Mac Lane - Shukla cohomology of rings. These results give new interpretations of the cohomology groups and of the rings
A groupoid is a small category in which all morphisms are isomorphisms. An inductive groupoid is a specialised groupoid whose object set is a regular biordered set and the morphisms admit a partial order. A normal category is a specialised small category whose object set is a strict preorder and the morphisms admit a factorisation property. A pair of `related' normal categories constitutes a cross-connection. Both inductive groupoids and cross-connections were identified by Nambooripad \cite{mem,cross} as categorical models of regular semigroups. We explore the inter-relationship between these…
We prove that Mal'tsev and Goursat categories may be characterised through stronger variations of the Shifting Lemma, that is classically expressed in terms of three congruences $R$, $S$ and $T$, and characterises congruence modular varieties. We first show that a regular category $\mathcal C$ is a Mal'tsev category if and only if the Shifting Lemma holds for reflexive relations on the same object in $\mathcal C$. Moreover, we prove that a regular category $\mathcal C$ is a Goursat category if and only if the Shifting Lemma holds for a reflexive relation $S$ and reflexive and positive relation…
The Noether isomorphism theorems and the Zassenhaus Lemma from group theory have a non-pointed version in a suitable categorical context first considered by W. Tholen in his PhD thesis. This article leads to a unification of these results with the ones in the pointed categorical context considered by O. Wyler, by working in the framework of star-regular categories introduced by M. Gran, Z. Janelidze and A. Ursini. Some concrete examples of categories where these results hold are examined in detail.
We consider the ordinary category Span(C) of (isomorphism classes of) spans of morphisms in a category C with finite limits as needed, composed horizontally via pullback, and give a general criterion for a quotient of Span(C) to be an allegory. In particular, when C carries a pullback-stable, but not necessarily proper, (E, M)-factorization system, we establish a quotient category Span_E(C) that is isomorphic to the category Rel_M(C) of M-relations in C, and show that it is a (unitary and tabular) allegory precisely when M is a class of monomorphisms in C. Without this restriction, one can sti…
We introduce the notion of a definable category--a category equivalent to a full subcategory of a locally finitely presentable category that is closed under products, directed colimits and pure subobjects. Definable subcategories are precisely the finite-injectivity classes. We prove a $2$-duality between the $2$-category of small exact categories and the $2$-category of definable categories, and provide a new proof of its additive version. We further introduce a third vertex of the $2$-category of regular toposes and show that the diagram of $2$-(anti-)equivalences between three $2$-categorie…
We introduce a new class of categories generalizing locally presentable ones. The distinction does not manifest in the abelian case and, assuming Vopenka's principle, the same happens in the regular case. The category of complete partial orders is the natural example of a nearly locally finitely presentable category which is not locally presentable.
We endow the homotopy category of well generated (pretriangulated) dg categories with a tensor product satisfying a universal property. The resulting monoidal structure is symmetric and closed with respect to the cocontinuous RHom of dg categories (in the sense of Toën [26]). We give a construction of the tensor product in terms of localisations of dg derived categories, making use of the enhanced derived Gabriel-Popescu theorem [21]. Given a regular cardinal alpha, we define and construct a tensor product of homotopically alpha-cocomplete dg categories and prove that the well generated tensor…
In this paper we develop the theory of quasispaces (for a Grothendieck topology) and of concrete quasitopoi, over a suitable base category. We introduce the notion of f-regular category and of f-regular functor. The f-regular categories are regular categories in which every family with a common codomain can be factorized into a strict epimorphic family followed by a (single) monomorphism. The f-regular functors are (essentially) functors that preserve finite strict monomorphic and arbitrary strict epimorphic families. These two concepts furnish the context to develop the constructions of the t…
We introduce the notion of star-symmetry for relations in a multi-pointed category and use it to obtain a characterization of the projective covers of 2-star-permutable categories. This generalizes the results of Rosický-Vitale for regular Mal'tsev categories, as well as those of Gran-Rodelo for regular subtractive categories. We apply the characterization in terms of star-symmetry to recover the syntactic conditions defining E-subtractive varieties in the sense of Ursini.
This paper provides a short introduction to the notion of regular category and its use in categorical algebra. We first prove some of its basic properties, and consider some fundamental algebraic examples. We then analyse the algebraic properties of the categories satisfying the additional Mal'tsev axiom, and then the weaker Goursat axiom. These latter contexts can be seen as the categorical counterparts of the properties of $2$-permutability and of $3$-permutability of congruences in universal algebra. Mal'tsev and Goursat categories have been intensively studied in the last years: we present…
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.
We extend the calculus of relations to embed a regular category A into a family of pseudo-abelian tensor categories T(A,d) depending on a degree function d. Under the condition that all objects of A have only finitely many subobjects, our main results are as follows: 1. Let N be the maximal proper tensor ideal of T(A,d). We show that T(A,d)/N is semisimple provided that A is exact and Mal'cev. Thereby, we produce many new semisimple, hence abelian, tensor categories. 2. Using lattice theory, we give a simple numerical criterion for the vanishing of N. 3. We determine all degree functions for w…
We prove Carlos Simpson's "semi-strictification" (or "weak unit") conjecture in the case of infinity-groupoids. More precisely, we introduce two precise versions of the conjecture, the "general" and the "regular" conjecture, involving two different notions of "non-unital categories". The "general" version involve infinity-categories where absolutely all composition operations (horizontal, vertical and whiskering) are defined and compatible, the "regular" version involve infinity-categories where all the composition operations corresponding to "regular" pasting diagram are defined and compatibl…
We introduce regular languages of morphisms in free monoidal categories, with their associated grammars and automata. These subsume the classical theory of regular languages of words and trees, but also open up a much wider class of languages over string diagrams. We use the algebra of monoidal and cartesian restriction categories to investigate the properties of regular monoidal languages, and provide sufficient conditions for their recognizability by deterministic monoidal automata.
We show that the quotient of a Hom-finite triangulated category C by the kernel of the functor Hom(T, -), where T is a rigid object, is preabelian. We further show that the class of regular morphisms in the quotient admit a calculus of left and right fractions. It follows that the Gabriel-Zisman localisation of the quotient at the class of regular morphisms is abelian. We show that it is equivalent to the category of finite dimensional modules over the endomorphism algebra of T in C.
What is ergonomic syntax for relations? In this first paper in a series of two, to answer the question we define regular calculi: a suitably structured functor from a category representing the syntax of regular logic to the category of posets, that takes each object to the poset of relations on that type. We introduce two major classes of examples, regular calculi corresponding to regular theories, and regular calculi corresponding to regular categories. For working in regular calculi, we present a graphical framework which takes as primitive the various moves of regular logic. Our main theore…
