Order ideals in categories (Q1058586)

A regular category \({\mathcal E}\) in the sense of \textit{M. Barr} [Lect. Notes Math. 236, 1-120 (1971; Zbl 0223.18010)] gives rise to a bicategory \({\mathcal R}el({\mathcal E})\) with the same objects and with relations as arrows. This paper considers a larger bicategory \({\mathcal I}dl({\mathcal E})\) whose objects are objects of \({\mathcal E}\) enriched with orders (reflexive, transitive relations) and whose arrows \(A\to B\) are order ideals in \(A^{op}\times B\). It makes sense to ask when an ideal from A to B has a right adjoint, and, this is shown to hold precisely when the ideal is ''locally'' principal. By analogy with metric spaces, an ordered object A of \({\mathcal E}\) is called Cauchy complete when every locally principal order ideal into A is principal. It is shown that every ordered object is Cauchy complete if and only if every strong epimorphism in \({\mathcal E}\) is a retraction (axiom of choice). When \({\mathcal E}\) is an elementary topos, the Cauchy completion of each ordered object A is constructed as the object of order-preserving arrows \(\Omega\) \(\to PA\) with right adjoints which have right adjoints. Here \(\Omega\) is the subobject classifier with its usual order and PA is the ordered object of order-preserving arrows \(A\to \Omega\). The proof is facilitated by complementing the calculus of relations in a regular category with the membership relation \(A\to PA\) and its characterizing property.