The Isbell monad

Factorization systems, substructures, quotient structures, congruences, amalgams (18A32) Categories admitting limits (complete categories), functors preserving limits, completions (18A35) Embedding theorems, universal categories (18B15) Monads (= standard construction, triple or triad), algebras for monads, homology and derived functors for monads (18C15)

Abstract: In 1966, John Isbell introduced a construction on categories which he termed the "couple category" but which has since come to be known as the Isbell envelope. The Isbell envelope, which combines the ideas of contravariant and covariant presheaves, has found applications in category theory, logic, and differential geometry. We clarify its meaning by exhibiting the assignation sending a locally small category to its Isbell envelope as the action on objects of a pseudomonad on the 2-category of locally small categories; this is the Isbell monad of the title. We characterise the pseudoalgebras of the Isbell monad as categories equipped with a cylinder factorisation system; this notion, which appears to be new, is an extension of Freyd and Kelly's notion of factorisation system from orthogonal classes of arrows to orthogonal classes of cocones and cones.

Review text

In [\textit{J.R. Isbell}, Bull. Am. Math. Soc. 72, 619--655 (1966; Zbl 0142.25401)] a process (which Lawvere later called \textit{Isbell envelope}) is described which combines in some sense the free completion and free cocompletion of a category. As the latter two can be described by the units of pseudomonads on the 2-category \textbf{CAT} having as their pseudoalgebras the complete and the cocomplete categories respectively, the paper sets as its goal the description of a \textit{Isbell monad} on \textbf{CAT} having the embedding of a category \(\mathcal{C}\) in its Isbell envelope as its unit at \(\mathcal{C}\). For this the author defines an interesting generalization of (orthogonal) factorization systems on a category, which he calls cylindrical factorization systems. A cylinder in \(\mathcal{C}\) is essentially a sort of morphism of (small) diagrams in \(\mathcal{C}\) (defined as a natural transformation between appropriately defined functors to \(\mathcal{C}\), in a slightly different way than in the erratum [\textit{P. J. Freyd} and \textit{G. M. Kelly}, J. Pure Appl. Algebra 4, 121 (1974; Zbl 0278.18002)] to their `Categories of continuous functors, I'). Then a cylinder factorization system in \(\mathcal{C}\) consists of a pair of classes \(\mathcal{E}\) and \(\mathcal{M}\) of (not necessarily discrete) cocones and cones respectively which are orthogonal to each other in the appropriate sense, and for which every cylinder factorizes essentially uniquely as a cocone in \(\mathcal{E}\) followed by a cone in \(\mathcal{M}\). Call \textbf{CFS} the 2-category of categories equipped with a cylinder factorization system and with 1-cells the functors preserving the \(\mathcal{E}\)'s and the \(\mathcal{M}\)'s, and all natural transformations as 2-cells. Then the paper shows that the forgetful functor from \textbf{CFS} to \textbf{CAT} is pseudomonadic and the unit at \(\mathcal{C}\) is the embedding to its Isbell envelope with some canonical cylinder factorization system. The author notes that the Isbell monad generalises \textit{M. Korostenski} and \textit{W. Tholen}'s characterisation [J. Pure Appl. Algebra 85, No. 1, 57--72 (1993; Zbl 0778.18001)] of orthogonal factorisation systems as pseudoalgebras for the squaring monad \((-)^2\) on \textbf{CAT}. Good examples and motivations are given, and additional results are obtained from restricting the diagrams to specific types or the morphisms in \textbf{CFS}.

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