Strict monadic topology. I: First separation axioms and reflections (Q2310773)

The investigation of the topological content of monads (or vice-versa) goes back to the 1960's, with E.G. Manes identification of the category of algebras for the ultrafilter monad with the category of compact Hausdorff spaces. It was pursued under various forms and levels of generality (lax algebras, monadic topology, monoidal topology) since then. This paper considers this relation ``as a suggestion to treat algebraic categories as topological ones'', to quote the authors. Here is their summary of the paper: ``Given a monad T on the category of sets, we consider reflections of Alg\((T)\) into its full subcategories formed by algebras satisfying natural counterparts of topological separation axioms \(T_0\), \(T_1\), \(T_2\), \(T_{ts}\), and \(T_{ths}\); here ts stands for totally separated and ths for what we call totally homomorphically separated, which coincides with ts in the (compact Hausdorff) topological case. We ask whether these reflections satisfy simple conditions useful in categorical Galois theory, and give some partial answers in easy cases.''