No label defined (Q4526528)

The author studies closure operators in the sense of Giuli and the reviewer [\textit{D. Dikranjan} and \textit{E. Giuli}, Topology Appl. 27, 129-143 (1987; Zbl 0634.54008)] on a well-powered, finitely complete and cocomplete, quasi-additive category \({\mathcal C}\) having (strong epi, mono) factorization structure for morphisms such that all pullbacks of cokernels are cokernels and arbitrary intersections of subobjects exist. To a closure operator \(C\) of \({\mathcal C}\) one assigns: a) the full subcategory \(\Delta_C\) of \({\mathcal C}\) of all objects \(X\) such that the diagonal \(\Delta_X\) in \(X\times X\) is \(C\)-closed; b) the full subcategory \({\mathcal F}_C\) of \({\mathcal C}\) of all objects \(X\) such that the zero subobject of \(X\) is \(C\)-closed. For a reflective subcategory \({\mathcal A}\) of \({\mathcal C}\) the notion of \({\mathcal A}\)-initial closure operator was introduced by the reviewer [\textit{D. N. Dikranjan}, Suppl. Rend. Circ. Mat. Palermo, II. Ser. 29, 105-160 (1992; Zbl 0782.54009)] (the closure of a subobject \(A\) of an arbitrary object \(X\) in \({\mathcal C}\) can be obtained as the pullback along the reflexion morphism \(\theta_X:X\to RX\) of the closure of the image of \(A\) under \(\theta_X\) computed in \(RX\)). The author proposes a modified definition of initial closure operator \(C\) (here it means \({\mathcal F}_C\)-initial instead of \(\Delta_C\)-initial as in loc. cit.). In this terms the main result of the paper is the characterization of the initial closure operators that are weakly hereditary (in the sense of Giuli and the reviewer, loc. cit.). Since initial closure operators include both regular closure operators and normal closure operators, this extends some results of \textit{M. M. Clementino} [Topology Appl. 49, No. 2, 129-139 (1993; Zbl 0781.18001)] and the author [\textit{T. H. Fay}, Cah. Topologie Géom. Différ. Catégoriques 37, No. 4, 279-293 (1996; Zbl 0870.18003)]. Two examples are given of idempotent initial closure operators related to an arbitrary non-trivial quotient-reflective subcategory of the category \({\mathcal GRP}\) of groups that are never weakly hereditary. Applications to categorical compactness with respect to an initial closure operator \(C\) are given in the following three directions: a) an object \(X\) is \(C\)-compact iff its \({\mathcal F}_C\)-reflection is \(C\)-compact; b) the ``test spaces'' can be taken from \({\mathcal F}_C\); c) applications to \(I\)-compactness in \({\mathcal {GRP}}\), where \(I\) is the closure operator of \({\mathcal {GRP}}\) defined by the isolator. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0952.00067].