Categorical closure operators (Q2752018)

As the author points out in the introduction, this paper is a survey article with the aim to give an introduction to the theory of categorical closure operators and their possible applications to different areas of mathematics. A very large list of references, obviously carefully selected, should be a real help to a reader interested in specific results or applications. \S 1 contains the definition and main results of the general theory. The general setting for categorical closure operators is a category \({\mathcal X}\) and a class \({\mathcal M}\) of monomorphisms of \({\mathcal X}\), which contains all isomorphisms. Moreover, \({\mathcal X}\) is assumed to be \({\mathcal M}\)-complete, i.e., \({\mathcal M}\) is a subcategory, pullbacks of morphisms in \({\mathcal M}\) exist and \({\mathcal M}\) is closed under arbitrary pullbacks. These data induce a uniquely determined structure of an \(({\mathcal E},{\mathcal M})\)-category for sinks in \({\mathcal X}\), where \({\mathcal E}\) denotes a class of sinks determined by the unique diagonalization property with respect to \({\mathcal M}\). A closure operator \(C\) with respect to \({\mathcal M}\) is defined as a collection of mappings \((\square)_X:{\mathcal M}/X\to{\mathcal M}/X\), \(X\in{\mathcal M}\), where \({\mathcal M}/X\) is the lattice of \({\mathcal M}\)-subobjects of \(X\), satisfying the following conditions: (a) For every \(m:M\to X\) in \({\mathcal M}/X,X \in{\mathcal M}\), \(m\leq(m)_X\) holds. (b) \(m\leq n\) implies \((m)_X\leq (n)_X\) for \(m,n\in{\mathcal M}/X,X\in{\mathcal X}\). (c) For any \(f:X\to Y\) in \({\mathcal X}\) and any \(m\in{\mathcal M}/Y\) \((f^{-1}(m))_X\leq f^{-1}((m)_Y)\) follows. Several often used results for closure operators are proved, several examples are given and notions such as idempotent, hereditary and additive closure operators are introduced. After this introductory section applications of closure operators to the relation between epimorphisms and dense morphisms (\S 2), to separation (\S 3), compactness (\S 4) and connectedness (\S 5) are given, which show how useful and canonical this notion is in many areas. The reader interested in a comprehensive and detailed presentation of categorical closure operators also with respect to applications, may consult the monograph, ``Categorical structure of closure operators'' by \textit{D. Dikranjan} and \textit{W. Tholem} [Kluwer (1995; Zbl 0853.18002)], to the reviewer's knowledge the only existing book on this subject. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0966.00025].