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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.

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.

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.

The presence of superfluid phases in the interior of a neutron star affects its dynamics, as neutrons can flow relative to the non-superfluid (normal) components of the star with little or no viscosity. A probe of superfluidity comes from pulsar glitches, sudden jumps in the observed rotational period of radio pulsars. Most models of glitches build on the idea that a superfluid component of the star is decoupled from the spin-down of the normal component, and its sudden recoupling leads to a glitch. This transition in the strength of the hydrodynamic coupling is explained in terms of quantum vortices (long-lived vortices that are naturally present in the neutron superfluid at the microscopic scale). After introducing some basic ideas, we derive (as a pedagogical exercise) the formal scheme shared by many glitch studies. Then, we apply these notions to present some recent advances and discuss how observations can help us to indirectly probe the internal physics of neutron stars., Comment: 30 pages, 7 figures. Chapter 7 of the volume "Astrophysics in the XXI Century with Compact Stars", Eds. C.A.Z. Vasconcellos and F. Weber, World Scientific (2022), submitted in August 2021. Minor corrections implemented

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.

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., Comment: 34 pages; small changes throughout the text and major changes in Section 11; final published version

A common way to calculate the glitch activity of a pulsar is an ordinary linear regression of the observed cumulative glitch history. This method however is likely to underestimate the errors on the activity, as it implicitly assumes a (long-term) linear dependence between glitch sizes and waiting times, as well as equal variance, i.e., homoscedasticity, in the fit residuals, both assumptions that are not well justified from pulsar data. In this paper, we review the extrapolation of the glitch activity parameter and explore two alternatives: the relaxation of the homoscedasticity hypothesis in the linear fit and the use of the bootstrap technique. We find a larger uncertainty in the activity with respect to that obtained by ordinary linear regression, especially for those objects in which it can be significantly affected by a single glitch. We discuss how this affects the theoretical upper bound on the moment of inertia associated with the region of a neutron star containing the superfluid reservoir of angular momentum released in a stationary sequence of glitches. We find that this upper bound is less tight if one considers the uncertainty on the activity estimated with the bootstrap method and allows for models in which the superfluid reservoir is entirely in the crust., Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures, contribution to special issue "Superfluidity and Superconductivity in Neutron Stars", see https://doi.org/10.3390/universe7010008

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.

The observation of the first pulse-to-pulse glitch in the Vela pulsar opens a new window on the internal dynamics of neutron stars. We study the minimal three-component model for pulsar glitches by solving it with generic initial conditions. The purpose is to use this solution to fit the data of the 2016 Vela glitch by employing a Bayesian approach and to obtain a probability distribution for the physical parameters of the model and for observational parameters, such as the glitch rise time and the relaxation timescale. The fit is achieved through Bayesian inference. Due to the presence of an increase in the timing residuals near the glitch time, an extra magnetospheric component was added to the three-component model to deal with this phenomenon. A physically reasonable, non-informative prior was set on the parameters of the model, so that the posterior distribution could be compared with information obtained from microphysical calculations. By considering a model with a tightened prior on the moment of inertia fractions and by comparing it with the original model by means of Bayesian model selection, we studied the possibility of a crust-limited superfluid reservoir. We obtained the posterior distribution for the moment of inertia fractions of the superfluid components, the coupling parameters, and the initial velocity lags between the components. An analysis of the inferred posterior also confirmed the presence of an overshoot in that glitch and set an upper limit of $\sim 6\,$s on the glitch rise timescale. The comparison between the two models with different priors on the moment of inertia fractions appears to indicate a need for a core participation in the glitch phenomenon, regardless of the uncertain strength of the entrainment coupling., Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures

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., Comment: 20 pages

During the spin-up phase of a large pulsar glitch - a sudden decrease of the rotational period of a neutron star - the angular velocity of the star may overshoot, namely reach values greater than that observed for the new post-glitch equilibrium. These transient phenomena are expected on the basis of theoretical models for pulsar internal dynamics and their observation has the potential to provide an important diagnostic for glitch modelling. We present a simple criterion to assess the presence of an overshoot, based on the minimal analytical model that is able to reproduce an overshooting spin-up. We employ it to fit the data of the 2016 glitch of the Vela pulsar, obtaining estimates of the fractional moments of inertia of the internal superfluid components involved in the glitch, of the rise and decay timescales of the overshoot, and of the mutual friction parameters between the superfluid components and the normal one. We study the cases with and without strong entrainment in the crust: in the former, we find indication of a large inner core strongly coupled to the observable component and of a reservoir of angular momentum extending into the core to densities below nuclear saturation, while in the latter a large reservoir extending above nuclear saturation and a standard normal component without inner core are suggested., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables

Observations of pulsar glitches may provide insights on the internal physics of neutron stars and recent studies show how it is in principle possible to constrain pulsar masses with timing observations. The reliability of these estimates depend on the current uncertainties about the structure of neutron stars and on our ability to model the dynamics of the superfluid neutrons in the internal layers. We assume a simplified model for the rotational dynamics of a neutron star and estimate an upper bound to the mass of 25 pulsars from their largest glitch and average activity: the aim is to understand to which extent the mass constraints are sensitive to the choice of the unknown structural properties of neutron stars, like the extension of the superfluid region and the equation of state. Reasonable values, within the range measured for neutron star masses, are obtained only if the superfluid domain extends for at least a small region inside the outer core, which is compatible with calculations of the neutron S-wave pairing gap. Moreover, the mass constraints stabilise when the superfluid domain extends to densities over nuclear saturation, irrespective of the equation of state tested., Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures

We investigate what is remaining of the 3x3 lemma and of the denormalized 3x3 lemma, respectively valid in a pointed protomodular and in a Maltsev category, in the context of partial pointed protomodular and partial Maltsev categories, relatively to a class ${\Sigma}$ of points. The results apply, among other structures, to monoids, semirings and quandles

Pinning of vortex lines in the inner crust of a spinning neutron star may be the mechanism that enhances the differential rotation of the internal neutron superfluid, making it possible to freeze some amount of angular momentum which eventually can be released, thus causing a pulsar glitch. We investigate the general relativistic corrections to pulsar glitch amplitudes in the slow-rotation approximation, consistently with the stratified structure of the star. We thus provide a relativistic generalization of a previous Newtonian model that was recently used to estimate upper bounds on the masses of glitching pulsars. We find that the effect of general relativity on the glitch amplitudes obtained by emptying the whole angular momentum reservoir is less than 30\%. Moreover we show that the Newtonian upper bounds on the masses of large glitchers obtained from observations of their largest recorded event differ by less than a few percent from those calculated within the relativistic framework. This work can also serve as a basis to construct more sophisticated models of angular momentum reservoir in a relativistic context. In particular, we present two alternative scenarios for "rigid" and "slack" vortex lines, and we generalize the Feynman-Onsager relation to the case when both entrainment coupling between the fluids and a strong gravitational field are present., Comment: 15 pages, accepted for publication in MNRAS

We show that quandle coverings in the sense of Eisermann form a (regular epi)-reflective subcategory of the category of surjective quandle homomorphisms, both by using arguments coming from categorical Galois theory and by constructing concretely a centralization congruence. Moreover, we show that a similar result holds for normal quandle extensions., Comment: 17 pages

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 Jo\'{o}nsson-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.

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., Comment: 30 pages. Revised version: small changes throughout the text, restricted Proposition 6.17 to the pointed context, added references to recent related work

We characterise, in pointed regular categories, the ideals as the zero-classes of surjective relations. Moreover, we study a variation of the "Smith is Huq" condition: two surjective left split relations commute as soon as their zero-classes commute., Comment: 13 pages

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., Comment: 22 pages

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., Comment: Final version

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.