Globalization of confluent partial actions on topological and metric spaces (Q1764665)

For a monoid \(M\) it is noted that the inclusion functor of the category of \(M\)-sets (objects \((X,\alpha)\) are sets with a monoidal action \(\alpha\) of \(M\) on \(X\), and morphisms are the equivariant maps) into the category of partial \(M\)-sets (\(\alpha\) is a partial map) has a left adjoint \(L\). The unit \((X,\alpha)\to L(X,\alpha)\) of this adjunction defines an extension of \((X,\alpha)\) (it is an injection) that the authors refer to as the universal globalization of \((X,\alpha)\). Analogous results are obtained in the cases in which the category of sets is replaced by the category of topological spaces and continuous maps and by the category of metric spaces and non-expansive maps. A special type of partial action, called confluent, is considered. Essentially such an action must behave well with respect to a suitable presentation of \(M\) (also called confluent) in terms of generators and relations. The behavior of the globalization in terms of preserving or not certain properties is investigated for confluent partial actions. It is shown, for example, that the extension is an embedding and that under natural assumptions, dimension, normality, and path metricity are preserved.