The exact completion for regular categories enriched in posets (Q2078381)

The paper studies categories enriched in the cartesian closed category of partially ordered sets (=posets) and in particular categories that are regular and exact as poset-enriched categories in the sense of [\textit{A. Kurz} and \textit{J. Velebil,} Math. Struct. Comput. Sci. 27, No. 7, 1153--1194 (2017; Zbl 1423.08007)]. The ordinary regular-epi - mono factorization is suitably adapted to one where the ``mono'' part comprises the representably fully faithful (\textbf{ff}-)morphisms and the ``regular epi'' part comprises the class of morphisms orthogonal to the former (\textbf{so}-morphisms), where agaiin orthogonality is meant in an order-enriched manner. One contribution of the author is to simplify the definition of regular category proposed in loc. cit. by showing that one of the conditions of that definition follows from the other ones. He then proceeds to develop a calculus of relations akin to poset-enriched categories where the key concept is that of a weakening closed relation (= relatiion compatible on both sides with the order). Via that he describes the exact completion of a regular category in this setting, which is his main contribution (Theorem 4.19 in the paper). Ordinary exact completion of a regular category is obtained by splitting idempotents in the category of relations of a regular category, and then taking the category of maps. By analogy, the poset-enriched exact completion is obtained by splitting idempotents and then considering maps in a category where the objects are pairs \((X,E)\) with \(E\) a weakening-closed, reflexive, transitive relation (=congruence) on \(X\) and the morphisms are weakening-closed relations compatible with the congruences of the domain and the codomain. He arrives also at a characterization of categories that arise as exact completions of regular ones (Theorem 5.6) and this characterization allows him to identify, among others, ordered commutative monoids as exact completion of torsion-free ones and Nachbin spaces as exact completion of Priestley spaces. He also investigates a connection between the exact completion of an ordinary regular category and the enriched exact completion of its internal posets.