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Andrea Montoli

Publications and source records attributed to Andrea Montoli.

18 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

R-full Schreier internal categories and their directions

We introduce the notion of R-full Schreier internal category, which is the monoid analogue of the notion of aspherical abelian groupoid. We associate with every R-full Schreier internal category a direction, which is a Schreier split extension with commutative and cancellative kernel. We show that this association is functorial and that such functor is a product preserving cofibration. Thanks to these properties, we equip the connected components of the fibres of such functor with canonical commutative monoid structures. Using the equivalence between Schreier internal categories and crossed semimodules of monoids, we describe these commutative monoids in terms of crossed Schreier extensions.

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arXiv2026

A direction functor approach to the cohomology of small categories

We show how the direction functors can be used to develop a cohomology theory for Barr-exact and S-Maltsev categories, where S is a suitable class of split epimorphisms with a fixed section. Using the fact that, for any set B, the category of small categories with B as set of object is S-Maltsev with respect to the class of Schreier points, we show that the cohomology theory of small categories arising from the direction functors coincides with the one introduced by Hoff and Golasinski.

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arXiv2026

Torsion Theories in a Non-pointed Context

We study a non-pointed version of the notion of torsion theory in the framework of categories equipped with a posetal monocoreflective subcategory such that the coreflector inverts monomorphisms. We explore the connections of such torsion theories with factorization systems and categorical Galois structures. We describe several examples of these torsion theories, in the dual of elementary toposes, in varieties of universal algebras used as models for non-classical logic, and in coslices of the category of abelian groups.

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arXiv2026

The direction functor for Schreier extensions of monoids

We observe that the process of associating an action to any Schreier extension of monoids with commutative and cancellative kernel is functorial. We show that this functor is a generalisation of the direction functor, used to give a categorical description of non-abelian cohomology in terms of extensions. We further prove that our functor is a conservative, product preserving cofibration and from this we conclude that its fibres are endowed with a canonical symmetric monoidal structure. The commutative monoids obtained as connected components of these symmetric monoidal categories are isomorphic to Patchkoria second cohomology monoids of a monoid with coefficients in semimodules.

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arXiv2026

Algebraic exponentiation and action representability for V-groups

We show that the category of V-groups, where V is a cartesian quantale, so in particular the category of preordered groups, is locally algebraically cartesian closed with respect to the class of points underlying the product V-category structure. We obtain this by observing that such points correspond to (V-Cat)-enriched functors from a V-group, seen as a one-object V-category, to the category V-Grp of V-groups. Moreover, we show that the actions corresponding to points underlying the product V-category structure are representable.

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arXiv2025

A comparison between weakly protomodular and protomodular objects in unital categories

We compare the concepts of protomodular and weakly protomodular objects within the context of unital categories. Our analysis demonstrates that these two notions are generally distinct. To establish this, we introduce left pseudocancellative unital magmas and characterise weakly protomodular objects within the variety of algebras they constitute. Subsequently, we present an example of a weakly protomodular object that is not protomodular in this category.

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arXiv2025

Homological Lemmas in a Non-pointed Context

We show that non-pointed versions of the classical homological lemmas hold in regular protomodular categories equipped with a suitable posetal monocoreflective subcategory. Examples of such categories are all protomodular varieties of universal algebras having more than one constant, like the ones of unitary rings, Boolean algebras, Heyting algebras and MV-algebras, their topological models, and the dual category of every elementary topos.

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arXiv2024

Right-preordered groups from a categorical perspective

We study the categorical properties of right-preordered groups, giving an explicit description of limits and colimits in this category, and studying some exactness properties. We show that, from an algebraic point of view, the category of right-preordered groups shares several properties with the one of monoids. Moreover, we describe split extensions of right-preordered groups, showing in particular that semidirect products of ordered groups have always a natural right-preorder.

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arXiv2022

On lax protomodularity of Ord-enriched categories

Our main focus concerns a possible lax version of the algebraic property of protomodularity for Ord-enriched categories. Our motivating example is the category OrdAb of preordered abelian groups; indeed, while abelian groups form a protomodular category, OrdAb does not. Having in mind the role of comma objects in the enriched context, we consider some of the characteristic properties of protomodularity with respect to comma objects instead of pullbacks. We show that the equivalence between protomodularity and certain properties on pullbacks also holds when replacing conveniently pullbacks by comma objects in any finitely complete category enriched in Ord, and propose to call lax protomodular such Ord-enriched categories. We conclude by studying this sort of lax protomodularity for OrdAb, equipped with a suitable Ord-enrichment, and show that OrdAb fulfills the equivalent lax protomodular properties with respect to the weaker notion of precomma object; we call such categories lax preprotomodular.

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arXiv2021

Intrinsic Schreier special objects

Motivated by the categorical-algebraic analysis of split epimorphisms of monoids, we study the concept of a special object induced by the intrinsic Schreier split epimorphisms in the context of a regular unital category with binary coproducts, comonadic covers and a natural imaginary splitting in the sense of our article [Intrinsic Schreier split extensions, Appl. Categ. Structures 28 (2020), 517--538]. In this context, each object comes naturally equipped with an imaginary magma structure. We analyse the intrinsic Schreier split epimorphisms in this setting, showing that their properties improve when the imaginary magma structures happen to be associative. We compare the intrinsic Schreier special objects with the protomodular objects, and characterise them in terms of the imaginary magma structure. We furthermore relate them to the Engel property in the case of groups and Lie algebras.

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arXiv2020

On the categorical behaviour of $V$-groups

We consider compatible group structures on a $V$-category, where $V$ is a quantale, and we study the topological and algebraic properties of such groups. Examples of such structures are preordered groups, metric and ultrametric groups, probabilistic (ultra)metric groups. In particular, we show that, when $V$ is a frame, symmetric $V$-groups satisfy very strong categorical-algebraic properties, typical of the category of groups. In particular, symmetric $V$-groups form a protomodular category.

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arXiv2019

Intrinsic Schreier split extensions

In the context of regular unital categories we introduce an intrinsic version of the notion of a Schreier split epimorphism, originally considered for monoids. We show that such split epimorphisms satisfy the same homological properties as Schreier split epimorphisms of monoids do. This gives rise to new examples of S-protomodular categories, and allows us to better understand the homological behaviour of monoids from a categorical perspective.

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arXiv2017

On some categorical-algebraic conditions in S-protomodular categories

In the context of protomodular categories, several additional conditions have been considered in order to obtain a closer group-like behavior. Among them are locally algebraic cartesian closedness and algebraic coherence. The recent notion of S-protomodular category, whose main examples are the category of monoids and, more generally, categories of monoids with operations and Joónsson-Tarski varieties, raises a similar question: how to get a description of S-protomodular categories with a strong monoid-like behavior. In this paper we consider relative versions of the conditions mentioned above, in order to exhibit the parallelism with the "absolute" protomodular context and to obtain a hierarchy among S-protomodular categories.

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arXiv2017

Two characterisations of groups amongst monoids

The aim of this paper is to solve a problem proposed by Dominique Bourn: to provide a categorical-algebraic characterisation of groups amongst monoids and of rings amongst semirings. In the case of monoids, our solution is given by the following equivalent conditions: (i) $G$ is a group; (ii) $G$ is a Mal'tsev object, i.e., the category of points over $G$ in the category of monoids is unital; (iii) $G$ is a protomodular object, i.e., all points over $G$ are stably strong. We similarly characterise rings in the category of semirings. On the way we develop a local or object-wise approach to certain important conditions occurring in categorical algebra. This leads to a basic theory involving what we call unital and strongly unital objects, subtractive objects, Mal'tsev objects and protomodular objects. We explore some of the connections between these new notions and give examples and counterexamples.

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arXiv2016

A characterization of central extensions in the variety of quandles

The category of symmetric quandles is a Mal'tsev variety whose subvariety of abelian symmetric quandles is the category of abelian algebras. We give an algebraic description of the quandle extensions that are central for the adjunction between the variety of quandles and its subvariety of abelian symmetric quandles.

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arXiv2016

A criterion for reflectiveness of normal extensions

We give a new sufficient condition for the normal extensions in an admissible Galois structure to be reflective. We then show that this condition is indeed fulfilled when X is the (protomodular) reflective subcategory of S-special objects of a Barr-exact S-protomodular category C, where S is the class of split epimorphic trivial extensions in C. Next to some concrete examples where the criterion may be applied, we also study the adjunction between a Barr-exact unital category and its abelian core, which we prove to be admissible.

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arXiv2013

Characteristic subobjects in semi-abelian categories

We extend to semi-abelian categories the notion of characteristic subobject, which is widely used in group theory and in the theory of Lie algebras. Moreover, we show that many of the classical properties of characteristic subgroups of a group hold in the general semi-abelian context, or in stronger ones.

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