Slack Hopf Monads

Abstract: Hopf monads generalise Hopf algebras. They clarify several aspects of the theory of Hopf algebras and capture several related structures such as weak Hopf algebras and Hopf algebroids. However, important parts of Hopf algebra theory are not reached by Hopf monads, most noticeably Drinfeld's quasi-Hopf algebras. In this paper we introduce a generalisation of Hopf monads, that we call slack Hopf monads. This generalisation retains a clean theory and is flexible enough to encompass quasi-Hopf algebras as examples. A slack Hopf monad is a colax magma monad $T$ on a magma category $\mathcal{C}$ such that the forgetful functor $U^T : \mathcal{C}^T \rightarrow \mathcal{C}$ `slackly' preserves internal Homs. We give a number of different descriptions of slack Hopf monads, and study special cases such as slack Hopf monads on cartesian categories and $k$-linear exact slack Hopf monads on $\mathrm{Vect}_k$, that is comagma algebras such that a modified fusion operator is invertible. In particular, we characterise quasi-Hopf algebras in terms of slackness.