Facets of descent. III: Monadic descent for rings and algebras (Q1771118)

[For part I and II see \textit{G. Janelidze} and \textit{W. Tholen}, ibid. 2, 245--281 (1994; Zbl 0805.18005); ibid. 5, 229--248 (1997; Zbl 0880.18007)]. The authors present an elementary approach to the classical descent problems for modules and algebras, and their generalizations, based on the theory of monads. A general theorem for non-commutative rings is used to derive in an elegant way the following generalization of Grothendieck's descent result, formulated in the language of monads. It is shown that for a homomorphism \(p:R\rightarrow S\) of commutative rings, the extension of scalars functor \(S\otimes _R(-):R-mod\rightarrow S-mod\) is comonadic if and only if \(p\) is a pure monomorphism of \(R\)-modules. This result remains valid when modules are replaced by various sorts of algebras.