Magmal characterisations of cocartesian categories

Abstract

We present a survey of characterisations of cocartesian categories in terms of monoidal categories - and, more generally, magmal categories - satisfying additional properties. In particular, we show that the following are equivalent for a unital magmal category $(\mathcal M, \otimes)$, sharpening several classical characterisations. * $(\mathcal M, \otimes)$ is cocartesian monoidal. * Every object of $\mathcal M$ admits the structure of a unital magma with respect to $\otimes$, such that every morphism is a homomorphism, and a single compatibility condition holds between the magma structures and $\otimes$. * The tensor product functor ${\otimes} \colon \mathcal M \times \mathcal M \to \mathcal M$ admits a right adjoint.