The weak theory of monads (Q986072)

The author and her colleagues [\textit{G. Böhm, F. Nill} and \textit{K. Szlachányi}, ``Weak Hopf algebras. I. Integral theory and \(C^{\ast }\)-structure'', J. Algebra 221, No.~2, 385--438 (1999; Zbl 0949.16037)] developed the notion of weak Hopf algebra which gives, in a more accessible framework, an important class of abstract quantum groupoids: those with a separable ``algebra of objects''. What is weak about these structures is the condition relating the unit with the comultiplication and the condition relating the counit with the multiplication. A bialgebra \(H\) gives a comonad \(H\otimes -\) on the category \({\mathcal V}ect\) of vector spaces which lifts to the Eilenberg-Moore category \({\mathcal M}od(H) \) for the monad \(H\otimes -\). The study of lifting of comonads to Eilenberg-Moore categories is well established in category theory: see \textit{J. Beck} [``Distributive laws'', Lect. Notes Math. 80, 119--140 (1969; Zbl 0186.02902)] and \textit{É. Burroni} [``Lois distributives mixtes'', C. R. Acad. Sci., Paris, Sér. A 276, 897--900 (1973; Zbl 0257.18016)]. The present paper provides a weak theory of monads which includes a notion of weak lifting of comonads to Eilenberg-Moore categories. Indeed, the focus of the study is a weak version \({\mathrm{EM}}^{w}( \mathcal{K}) \) of the free Eilenberg-Moore completion \(\text{EM}( \mathcal{K}) \) of a 2-category \(\mathcal{K}\). As well as weak bialgebras, weak and partial entwining structures are shown to arise in this setting.