symmetric monoidal (∞,1)-category of spectra
In category theory and universal algebra, a monadicity theorem serves to characterize/recognize whether a given functor is a monadic functor.
Given a functor , then a parallel pair in is called -split if the pair has a split coequalizer in . Specifically, this means that there is a diagram in :
such that , and and have respective sections and satisfying . This implies that the arrow is necessarily a coequalizer of and .
The functor is said to create coequalizers of -split pairs if for any such -split pair, there exists a coequalizer of in which is preserved by , and moreover any fork in whose image in is a split coequalizer must itself be a coequalizer (not necessarily split).
(Beck’s monadicity theorem, tripleability theorem)
A functor is monadic (or tripleable) if and only if
has a left adjoint, and
creates coequalizers of -split pairs, def. .
The proof is reproduced for instance in (MacLane, p. 147-150, Riehl 2017, 5/5/).
An equivalent, and sometimes easier, way to state these conditions is to say that
(Beck’s monadicity theorem – alternative formulation)
A functor is monadic precisely if
has a left adjoint,
reflects isomorphisms (i.e. it is conservative), and
if for a parallel pair in the image has a split coequalizer in then has a coequalizer in which is preserved by .
(e.g. Borceux, vol 2, Thm. 4.4.4)
These conditions are equivalent to those in Thm. , because a conservative functor reflects any limits or colimits which exist in its domain and which it preserves (by this Prop.), while monadic functors are always conservative.
The crude monadicity theorem gives a sufficient, but not necessary, condition for a functor to be monadic. It states that a functor is monadic if
(Recall that a parallel pair is reflexive if and have a common section.) This sufficient, but not necessary, condition is sometimes easier to verify in practice. In contrast to the crude monadicity theorem, the necessary and sufficient condition above is sometimes called the precise monadicity theorem.
A further advantage of crude monadicity is this: while in general the composite of monadic functors need not be monadic, if satisfies the hypotheses of the crude monadicity theorem and is any monadic functor then is monadic. Furthermore, if both and both obey the hypotheses of the crude monadicity theorem, so does . See (BarrWells, Proposition 3.5.1) for these and further results.
Duskin’s monadicity theorem gives a different sufficient, but not necessary, condition which refers only to quotients of congruences.
(Duskin monadicity theorem)
A functor is monadic if
has a left adjoint,
and are finitely complete,
creates coequalizers for congruences in whose images in have split coequalizers.
We can weaken the hypothesis a bit further to obtain the theorem:
As usual, we can also modify it by replacing reflection of limits by reflection of isomorphisms.
If we view the objects of as underlying -objects with structure, this says that any congruence in induces a -structure on its quotient in . As with the crude monadicity theorem, this condition is sometimes easier to verify since quotients of congruences are often better-behaved than arbitrary coequalizers. This is the case in many “algebraic” situations.
Duskin actually gave a slightly more precise version only assuming the categories and to have particular finite limits, rather than all of them.
In the case when the base category is Set, one can further refine the requisite conditions. Linton proved that a functor is monadic if and only if
There are other versions of this theorem, including generalizations to monadicity over presheaf categories, which can be viewed as analogues of Giraud's theorem.
The version of the monadicity theorem given in Categories Work uses a notion of “creation of limits” which fails to observe the principle of equivalence, concluding that the comparison functor is an isomorphism of categories, rather than merely an equivalence. But the versions mentioned above can be found in the exercises.
Note however that if is an amnestic isofibration, then is monadic iff it is strictly monadic. For an application of this observation, see for example the discussion of algebraically free monads at free monad.
(base change of presheaves along essentially surjective functor)
Let
be a functor between small categories which is essentially surjective. Then for any bicomplete category (e.g. Set), the corresponding precomposition-functor on categories of -valued presheaves
is monadic. To see this, we check the conditions in Thm. :
By the assumption that is bicomplete, the left and right Kan extensions of presheaves along exist and exhibit as the middle part of a (“base change”) adjoint triple :
This shows that has a left adjoint. In addition, it is a left adjoint and as such preserves all colimits, hence in particular all coequalizers.
The assumption that is essentially surjective implies that is conservative (because isomorphisms of presheaves are natural transformation of the underlying functors which are natural isomorphisms, which is the case iff their component morphisms for each object is an isomorphism.)
(group actions/G-sets)
Specializating Ex. to the case (where Sets, just for definiteness and) where is the point-inclusion
into the delooping groupoid of a (discrete) group, and observing that
Sets,
is the category G-sets, i.e. of -group actions with equivariant functions between them,
gives that (1) is the forgetful functor
which is hence monadic. This is of course the forgetful functor on the algebras of the monad
which forms the Cartesian product with (the underlying set) of , and whose monad product is
is given by the group operation.
(monoid actions and monoid-oid actions)
In generalization of Ex. , if is a monoid and in Ex. is the point inclusion
into the corresponding 1-object category (see there), then the monadic functor (1)
is the forgetful functor on monoid actions, which are the algebras of the monad .
In this sense, the general situation of Ex. may be understood as monadicity of modules for a monoid-oid defined over a monoid-oid .
We will use Duskin’s monadicity theorem (Thm. ) to prove that the forgetful functor
from Groups to their underlying Sets is monadic.
Of course, this is also easy to show by explicit computation, but it serves as a useful example of how to use a monadicity theorem.
We first need it to have a left adjoint: this is easy to show by a direct construction of free groups, but we could also invoke the adjoint functor theorem.
It is also easy to show that it is conservative (a bijective group homomorphism is a group isomorphism).
So it remains to consider congruences:
Since limits in are created in , a congruence in on a group is an equivalence relation on which is also a subgroup of . This latter condition means that if and , then also and . Since for all , it follows that if and only if , so is determined by the subset of those such that . This is clearly a subgroup of , and moreover a normal subgroup, since if and we have , so . Conversely, it is easy to construct a congruence from any normal subgroup, so the two notions are equivalent. It remains only to observe that the quotient of a group by a normal subgroup is, in fact, a quotient of its associated congruence in , which is preserved by .
Thus, by Duskin’s monadicity theorem (Thm. ), is monadic.
The monadicity theorem becomes more important when the base category is more complicated and harder to work with explicitly, and when the objects of are not obviously defined as “objects of with extra structure.” For instance, the category of strict 2-categories is monadic over the category of 2-globular sets, essentially by definition, but it is much less trivial to show that it is also monadic over the category of 2-computads. This latter fact can, however, be proven using the monadicity theorem.
The monadicity theorem also plays a central role in monadic descent.
There is a version of the monadicity theorem for (∞,1)-monads in section 3.4 of
There is also a 2-categorical approach using quasicategories in
The original reference for the (crude and precise) monadicity theorems is an untitled manuscript of Jon Beck that was distributed around 1966 – 1968. The following is a scan of a copy distributed at the Conference Held at the Seattle Research Center of the Battelle Memorial Institute in June – July 1968, provided by John Kennison:
see also:
Textbook accounts:
Saunders MacLane, §VI.7 of: Categories for the Working Mathematician, Graduate Texts in Mathematics 5 Springer (1971) [doi:10.1007/978-1-4757-4721-8]
Francis Borceux, Section 4 in volume 2 of Handbook of Categorical Algebra, in 3 vols.
Chapter 3 of Michael Barr, Charles Wells, Toposes, Triples, and Theories Grundlehren der math. Wissenschaften 278, Springer-Verlag 1983. Available as TAC Reprint 12.
Further references:
Fred Linton, Some aspects of equational categories, Proceedings of the Conference on Categorical Algebra. Springer 1966.
Jean Bénabou, Jacques Roubaud, Monades et descente, C. R. Acad. Sc. Paris, Ser. A 270 (1970) 96-98 [gallica:12148/bpt6k480298g/f100, pdf, English translation (by Peter Heinig): MO:q/279152]
Duško Pavlović, Categorical interpolation: descent and the Beck-Chevalley condition without direct images, Category theory Como 1990, pp. 306–325, Lecture Notes in Mathematics 1488, Springer 1991
Pierre Deligne, Catégories Tannakiennes , Grothendieck Festschrift, vol. II, Birkhäuser Progress in Math. 87 (1990) pp. 111-195.
Wikipedia: monadicity theorem
John Bourke, Two dimensional monadicity, arxiv/1212.5123
Emily Riehl, §5.5 in: Category Theory in Context, Dover Publications (2017) [pdf, book website]
There is a version for Morita contexts instead of monads:
On Beck’s theorem for pseudomonads (higher monadic descent):
Discussion for (infinity,1)-monads:
and realized in the context of quasi-categories:
Last revised on November 6, 2023 at 08:01:21. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.