On rational pairings of functors (Q354670)

This paper is devoted to a generalization of the notion of rational modules over a ring. In the original situation, the notion of a rational module induces a connection between the categories of rational modules over the right dual ring of a coring and that of comodules over the coring. In this paper the situation is lifted to a more generalized category-theoretic setting. The main ingredient for this generalization introduced there is the notion of pairings between functors that extends the concept of adjoint functors in the sense that the natural transformation between hom-sets associated to an adjunction is not assumed to be a bijection. Such a pairing is said to be rational when all the components of the natural transformation are injective. This definition is adapted to the case of monads and comonads and makes it possible to establish a relation between algebras and coalgebras for these (co)monads similar to that of modules and comodules recalled above, which becomes a particular instance of a more general result. Special cases are then studied in the setting of monoidal categories.