Preunits and weak crossed products (Q734812)

The authors give a general notion of a crossed product of an algebra \(A\) and an object \(V\) both living in a monoidal category, using the notion of a preunit and the properties of idempotent morphisms. They endow \(A\otimes V\) with a multiplication and an idempotent morphism, whose image inherits the multiplication. Some sufficient conditions for the associativity of these multiplications are studied. If the product on \(A\otimes V\) has a preunit, the related idempotent is given in terms of the preunit, and its image has an algebra structure. This theory is used then in order to recover some classical examples of crossed products as well as the crossed products of an algebra by a weak bialgebra.