We thoroughly treat several familiar and less familiar definitions and results concerning categories, functors and distributors enriched in a base quantaloidQ. In analogy with V-category theory we discuss such things as adjoint functors, (pointwise) left Kan extensions, weighted (co)limits, presheaves and free (co)completion, Cauchy completion and Morita equivalence. With an appendix on the uni...

Each distributor between categories enriched over a small quantaloid Q gives rise to two adjunctions between the categories of contravariant and covariant presheaves, and hence to two monads. These two adjunctions are respectively generalizations of Isbell adjunctions and Kan extensions in category theory. It is proved that these two processes are functorial with infomorphisms playing as morphi...

-semilattices with that in the category of modules over a given unital commutative quantale. The resulting structures are called quantale algebroids. We show that their constitute a monadic category and prove a representation theorem for them using the notion of nucleus adjusted for our needs. We also characterize the lattice of nuclei on a free quantale algebroid. At the end of the paper, we p...

For a small quantaloid Q we consider four fundamental 2-monads T on Q-Cat, given by the presheaf 2-monad P and the copresheaf 2-monad P†, as well as their two composite 2-monads, and establish that they all laxly distribute over P. These four 2-monads therefore admit lax extensions to the category Q-Dist of Q-categories and their distributors. We characterize the corresponding (T,Q)-categories ...

In fairly elementary terms this paper presents, and expands upon, a recent result by Garner by which the notion of topologicity of a concrete functor is subsumed under the concept of total cocompleteness of enriched category theory. Motivated by some key results of the 1970s, the paper develops all needed ingredients from the theory of quantaloids in order to place essential results of categori...

We present a detailed synthetic overview of the utilisation of categorical techniques in the study of order structures together with their applications in operational quantum theory. First, after reviewing the notion of residuation and its implementation at the level of quantaloids we consider some standard universal constructions and the extension of adjunctions to weak morphisms. Second, we p...

We present a detailed synthetic overview of the utilisation of categorical techniques in the study of order structures together with their applications in operational quantum theory. First, after reviewing the notion of residuation and its implementation at the level of quantaloids we consider some standard universal constructions and the extension of adjunctions to weak morphisms. Second, we p...

For small involutive and integral quantaloids Q it is shown that covariant presheaves on symmetric Q-categories are equivalent to certain subalgebras of a speci c monad on the category of symmetric Q-categories. This construction is related to a weakening of the subobject classi er axiom which does not require the classi cation of all subalgebras, but only guarantees that classi able subalgebra...

For a monad S on a categoryK whose Kleisli category is a quantaloid, we introduce the notion of modularity, in such a way that morphisms in the Kleisli category may be regarded as V(bi)modules (= profunctors, distributors), for some quantale V . The assignment S // V is shown to belong to a global adjunction which, in the opposite direction, associates with every (commutative, unital) quantale ...