The analogy between Yetter's deformation theory form (lax) monoidal functors and Gerstenahaber's deformation theory for associative algebras is solidified by shown that under reasonable conditions the category of functors with an action of a lax monoidal functor is abelian, that an analogue of the Hochschild cohomology of an algebra with coefficients in a bimodule exists for monoidal functors, and is given by right derived functors. The deformation cohmology of a monoidal natural transformation is shown to be a special case.
We introduce monoidal categories whose monoidal products of any positive number of factors are lax coherent and whose nullary products are oplax coherent. We call them $\mathsf{Lax}^+\mathsf{Oplax}^0$-monoidal. Dually, we consider $\mathsf{Lax}_0\mathsf{Oplax}_+$-monoidal categories which are oplax coherent for positive numbers of factors and lax coherent for nullary monoidal products. We define $\mathsf{Lax}^+_0\mathsf{Oplax}^0_+$-duoidal categories with compatible $\mathsf{Lax}^+\mathsf{Oplax}^0$- and $\mathsf{Lax}_0\mathsf{Oplax}_+$-monoidal structures. We introduce comonoids in $\mathsf{La…
This article represents a preliminary attempt to link Kan extensions, and some of their further developments, to Fourier theory and quantum algebra through *-autonomous monoidal categories and related structures.
What are the fiber functors on small additive monoidal categories C which are not abelian? We give an answer which leads to a new Tannaka duality theorem for bialgebroids generalizing earlier results by Phung Ho Hai. The construction reveals a sheaf theoretic interpretation in so far as the reconstructed bialgebroid H has comodule category equivalent to the category of T-sheaves w.r.t. a monoidal Grothendieck topology on C. We also prove an existence theorem for fiber functors on small additive monoidal categories with bounded fusion and weak kernels. For certain autonomous categories a genera…
Here we describe three straightforward examples of what was called a graphic Fourier transformation in [4]. At least two of these examples may be viewed simply as monoidal comonads on suitable monoidal closed functor categories, but the third example, which involves "centres" of monoidal closed functor categories, is generally not comonadic. For the first two examples (i.e., association schemes and RCFT's), a more elaborate "probicategory" set-up was envisaged in an earlier version of this note, but many readers missed the main point so it is simplified (hopefully) below.
Kornel Szlachányi recently used the term skew-monoidal category for a particular laxified version of monoidal category. He showed that bialgebroids $H$ with base ring $R$ could be characterized in terms of skew-monoidal structures on the category of one-sided $R$-modules for which the lax unit was $R$ itself. We define skew monoidales (or skew pseudo-monoids) in any monoidal bicategory $\mathscr M$. These are skew-monoidal categories when $\mathscr M$ is $\mathrm{Cat}$. Our main results are presented at the level of monoidal bicategories. However, a consequence is that quantum categories in th…
Let $U:\mathcal{C}\rightarrow\mathcal{D}$ be a strong monoidal functor between abelian monoidal categories admitting a right adjoint $R$, such that $R$ is exact, faithful and the adjunction $U\dashv R$ is coHopf. Building on the work of Balan, we show that $R$ is separable (resp., special) Frobenius monoidal if and only if $R(\mathbb{1}_{\mathcal{D}})$ is a separable (resp., special) Frobenius algebra in $\mathcal{C}$. If further, $\mathcal{C},\mathcal{D}$ are pivotal (resp., ribbon) categories and $U$ is a pivotal (resp., braided pivotal) functor, then $R$ is a pivotal (resp., ribbon) functor…
In this mainly expository note, we state a criterion for when a left Kan extension of a lax monoidal functor along a strong monoidal functor can itself be equipped with a lax monoidal structure, in a way that results in a left Kan extension in MonCat. This belongs to the general theory of algebraic Kan extensions, as developed by Melliès-Tabareau, Koudenburg and Weber, and is very close to an instance of a theorem of Koudenburg. We find this special case particularly important due to its connections with the theory of graded monads.
Separable Frobenius monoidal functors were defined and studied under that name by Szlachanyi and by Day and Pastro, and in a more general context by Cockett and Seely. Our purpose here is to develop their theory in a very precise sense. We determine what kinds of equations in monoidal categories they preserve. For example we show they preserve lax (meaning not necessarily invertible) Yang-Baxter operators, weak Yang-Baxter operators in the sense of Alonso Alvarez et al., and (in the braided case) weak bimonoids in the sense of Pastro and Street. In fact, we characterize which monoidal expressi…
We define a notion of category enriched over an oplax monoidal category $V$, extending the usual definition of category enriched over a monoidal category. Even though oplax monoidal structures involve infinitely many functors $V^n\to V$, defining categories enriched over $V$ only requires the lower arity maps $(n \leq 3)$, similarly to the monoidal case. The focal point of the enrichment theory shifts, in the oplax case, from the notion of $V$-category (given by collections of objects and hom-objects together with composition and unit maps) to the one of categories enriched over $V$ (genuine c…
We introduce the notion of a monoidal category enriched in a braided monoidal category $\mathcal V$. We set up the basic theory, and prove a classification result in terms of braided oplax monoidal functors to the Drinfeld center of some monoidal category $\mathcal T$. Even the basic theory is interesting; it shares many characteristics with the theory of monoidal categories enriched in a symmetric monoidal category, but lacks some features. Of particular note, there is no cartesian product of braided-enriched categories, and the natural transformations do not form a 2-category, but rather sat…
We show that the (co)endomorphism algebra of a sufficiently separable "fibre" functor into Vect_k, for k a field of characteristic 0, has the structure of what we call a "unital" von Neumann core in Vect_k. For Vect_k, this particular notion of algebra is weaker than that of a Hopf algebra, although the corresponding concept in Set is again that of a group.
Frobenius monoidal functors preserve duals. We show that conversely, (co)monoidal functors between autonomous categories which preserve duals are Frobenius monoidal. We apply this result to linearly distributive functors between autonomous categories.
Generalized operads, also called generalized multicategories and $T$-monoids, are defined as monads within a Kleisli bicategory. With or without emphasizing their monoidal nature, generalized operads have been considered by numerous authors in different contexts, with examples including symmetric multicategories, topological spaces, globular operads and Lawvere theories. In this paper we study functoriality of the Kleisli construction, and correspondingly that of generalized operads. Motivated by this problem we develop a lax version of the formal theory of monads, and study its connection to …
We give a 3-categorical, purely formal argument explaining why on the category of Kleisli algebras for a lax monoidal monad, and dually on the category of Eilenberg-Moore algebras for an oplax monoidal monad, we always have a natural monoidal structures. The key observation is that the 2-category of lax monoidal monads in any 2-category D with finite products is isomorphic to the 2-category of monoidal objects with oplax morphisms in the 2-category of monads with lax morphisms in D. As we explain at the end of the paper a similar phenomenon occurs in many other situations.
It is well known that strong monoidal functors preserve duals. In this short note we show that a slightly weaker version of functor, which we call "Frobenius monoidal", is sufficient.
We show that each rigid monoidal category A over a field defines a family of universal tensor categories, which together classify all faithful monoidal functors from A to tensor categories. Each of the universal tensor categories classifies monoidal functors of a given 'homological kernel' and can be realised as a sheaf category, not necessarily on A. This yields a theory of 'local abelian envelope' which completes the notion of monoidal abelian envelopes.
We present a method of constructing monoidal, braided monoidal, and symmetric monoidal bicategories from corresponding types of monoidal double categories that satisfy a lifting condition. Many important monoidal bicategories arise naturally in this way, and applying our general method is much easier than explicitly verifying the coherence laws of a monoidal bicategory for each example. Abstracting from earlier work in this direction, we express the construction as a functor between locally cubical bicategories that preserves monoid objects; this ensures that it also preserves monoidal functor…
This paper is about skew monoidal tensored V-categories (= skew monoidal hommed V-actegories) and their categories of modules. A module over <M,*,R> is an algebra for the monad T = R * _ on M. We study in detail the skew monoidal structure of M^T and construct a skew monoidal forgetful functor from M^T to the category of E-objects in M where E=M(R,R) is the endomorphism monoid of the unit object R. Then we give conditions for the forgetful functor to be strong monoidal and for the category M^T of modules to be monoidal. In formulating these conditions a notion of `self-cocomplete' subcategorie…
We verify that Kelly's constructions of the internal Hom for enriched categories extends naturally to lax functors taking their values in a symmetric monoidal category. Our motivation is to set up a `calculus on lax functors' that will host the theory of weakly enriched categories that are defined by lax diagrams.
Monoidal functors U:C --> M with left adjoints determine, in a universal way, monoids T in the category of oplax monoidal endofunctors on M. Such monads will be called bimonads. Treating bimonads as abstract "quantum groupoids" we derive Tannaka duality between left adjointable monoidal functors and bimonads. Bialgebroids, i.e., Takeuchi's x_R-bialgebras, appear as the special case when T has also a right adjoint. Street's 2-category of monads then leads to a natural definition of the 2-category of bialgebroids.
Let $\mathcal{B}$ be a subcategory of a given category $\mathcal{D}$. Let $\mathcal{B}$ has monoidal structure. In this article, we discuss when can one extend the monoidal structure of $\mathcal{B}$ to $\mathcal{D}$ such that $\mathcal{B}$ becomes a sub monoidal category of monoidal category $\mathcal{D}$. Examples are discussed, and in particular, in an example of loop space, we elaborated all results discussed in this article.
This work contributes to clarifying several relationships between certain higher categorical structures and the homotopy type of their classifying spaces. Bicategories (in particular monoidal categories) have well understood simple geometric realizations, and we here deal with homotopy types represented by lax diagrams of bicategories, that is, lax functors to the tricategory of bicategories. In this paper, it is proven that, when a certain bicategorical Grothendieck construction is performed on a lax diagram of bicategories, then the classifying space of the resulting bicategory can be though…
In this paper, we state and prove precise theorems on the classification of the category of (braided) categorical groups and their (braided) monoidal functors, and some applications obtained from the basic studies on monoidal functors between categorical groups.
We construct a lax monoidal Topological Quantum Field Theory that computes Deligne-Hodge polynomials of representation varieties of the fundamental group of any closed manifold into any complex algebraic group $G$. As byproduct, we obtain formulas for these polynomials in terms of homomorphisms between the space of mixed Hodge modules on $G$. The construction is developed in a categorical-theoretic framework allowing its application to other situations.
We construct an equivalence between the 2-categories VMonCat of rigid V-monoidal categories for a braided monoidal category V and VModTens of oplax braided functors from V into the Drinfeld centers of ordinary rigid monoidal categories. The 1-cells in each are the respective lax monoidal functors, and the 2-cells are the respective monoidal natural transformations. Our proof also gives an equivalence in the case that we consider only strong monoidal 1-cells on both sides. The 2-categories VMonCat and VModTens have G-graded analogues. We also get an equivalence of 2-categories between G-extensi…
Inspired by recent work of Peter O'Sullivan (arXiv:2012.15703), we give a condition under which a faithful monoidal functor between abelian $\otimes$-categories is exact.
We decribe the correspondence between normalised $ω$-operads and certain lax monoidal structures on the category of globular sets. As with ordinary monoidal categories, one has a notion of category enriched in a lax monoidal category. Within the aforementioned correspondence, we provide also an equivalence between the algebras of a given normalised $ω$-operad, and categories enriched in globular sets for the induced lax monoidal structure.
Monads are well known to be equivalent to lax functors out of the terminal category. Morita contexts are here shown to be lax functors out of the chaotic category with two objects. This allows various aspects in the theory of Morita contexts to be seen as special cases of general results about lax functors. The account we give of this could serve as an introduction to lax functors for those familiar with the theory of monads. We also prove some very general results along these lines relative to a given 2-comonad, with the classical case of ordinary monad theory amounting to the case of the ide…
We introduce the notion of a lax monoidal fibration and we show how it can be conveniently used to deal with various algebraic structures that play an important role in some definitions of the opetopic sets (Baez-Dolan, Hermida-Makkai-Power). We present the 'standard' such structures, the exponential fibrations of basic fibrations and three areas of applications. First area is related to the T-categories of A. Burroni. The monoids in the Burroni lax monoidal fibrations form the fibration of T-categories. The construction of the relative Burroni fibrations and free T-categories in this context,…
We apply the notion of relative adjoint functor to generalise closed monoidal categories. We define representations in such categories and give their relation with left actions of monoids. The translation of these representations under lax monoidal functors is investigated. We introduce tensor product of representations of bimonoids as a functorial binary operation and show how symmetric lax monoidal functors act on this product. Finally we apply the general theory to classical and quantum representations.
We introduce a variant on the graphical calculus of Cockett and Seely for monoidal functors and illustrate it with a discussion of Tannaka reconstruction, some of which is known and some of which is new. The new portion is: given a separable Frobenius functor F: A --> B from a monoidal category A to a suitably complete or cocomplete braided autonomous category B, the usual formula for Tannaka reconstruction gives a weak bialgebra in B; if, moreover, A is autonomous, this weak bialgebra is in fact a weak Hopf algebra.
Monoidal categories enriched in a braided monoidal category $\mathcal{V}$ are classified by braided oplax monoidal functors from $\mathcal{V}$ to the Drinfeld centers of ordinary monoidal categories. In this article, we prove that this classifying functor is strongly monoidal if and only if the original $\mathcal{V}$-monoidal category is tensored over $\mathcal{V}$. We then define a completion operation which produces a tensored $\mathcal{V}$-monoidal category $\overline{\mathcal{C}}$ from an arbitrary $\mathcal{V}$-monoidal category $\mathcal{C}$, and we determine many equivalent conditions w…
Bondarko's (strong) weight complex functor is a triangulated functor from Voevodsky's triangulated category of motives to the homotopy category of chain complexes of classical Chow motives. Its construction is valid for any dg enhanced triangulated category equipped with a weight structure. In this paper we consider weight complex functors in the setting of stable symmetric monoidal $\infty$-categories. We prove that the weight complex functor is symmetric monoidal under a natural compatibility assumption. To prove this result, we develop additive and stable symmetric monoidal variants of the …
As shown in a previous paper by the same authors, the theory of Galois functors provides a categorical framework for the characterisation of bimonads on any category as Hopf monads and also for the characterisation of opmonoidal monads on monoidal categories as right Hopf monads in the sense of Bruguieres and Virelizier. Hereby the central part is to describe conditions under which a comparison functor between the base category and the category of Hopf modules becomes an equivalence (Fundamental Theorem). For monoidal categories, Aguiar and Chase extended the setting by replacing the base cate…
This paper provides a rewording in the language of lax-functors of the definition of open dynamics given in our systemic theory of interactivity exposed in previous papers.
Tannaka Duality describes the relationship between algebraic objects in a given category and their representations; an important case is that of Hopf algebras and their categories of representations; these have strong monoidal forgetful "fibre functors" to the category of vector spaces. We simultaneously generalize the theory of Tannaka duality in two ways: first, we replace Hopf algebras with weak Hopf algebras and strong monoidal functors with separable Frobenius monoidal functors; second, we replace the category of vector spaces with an arbitrary braided monoidal category. To accomplish thi…
The center construction is not (classically) functorial. In this note, we specialize a universal construction of Jacob Lurie to the category of rings and upgrade the classical center to a lax functor. In particular, we find lax functors to the Morita category and the category of cospans.
The category of double categories and double functors is equipped with a symmetric closed monoidal structure. For any double category $\mathbb A$, the corresponding internal hom functor $|[ \mathbb A,-]|$ sends a double category $\mathbb B$ to the double category whose 0-cells are the double functors $\mathbb A \to \mathbb B$, whose horizontal and vertical 1-cells are the horizontal and vertical pseudotransformations, respectively, and whose 2-cells are the modifications. Some well-known functors of practical significance are checked to be compatible with this monoidal structure.
Coherence theorems are fundamental to how we think about monoidal categories and their generalizations. In this paper we revisit Mac Lane's original proof of coherence for monoidal categories using the Grothendieck construction. This perspective makes the approach of Mac Lane's proof very amenable to generalization. We use the technique to give efficient proofs of many standard coherence theorems and new coherence results for bicategories with shadow and for their functors.
