Definition
A subcategory A of a category B is said to be reflective in B if for each B-object B there exists an A-object and a B-morphism such that for each B-morphism there exists a unique A-morphism with .
The pair is called the A-reflection of B. The morphism is called A-reflection arrow. (Although often, for the sake of brevity, we speak about only as about the A-reflection of B.
This is equivalent to saying that the embedding functor is adjoint. The coadjoint functor is called the reflector. The map is the unit of this adjunction.
The reflector assigns to the A-object and for a B-morphism is determined by the commuting diagram
If all A-reflection arrows are (extremal) epimorphisms, then the subcategory A is said to be (extremal) epireflective. Similarly, it is bireflective if all reflection arrows are bimorphisms.
All these notions are special case of the common generalization — -reflective subcategory, where is a class of morphisms.
The -reflective hull of a class A of objects is defined as the smallest -reflective subcategory containing A. Thus we can speak about reflective hull, epireflective hull, extremal epireflective hull, etc.
Dual notions to the above mentioned notions are coreflection, coreflection arrow, (mono)coreflective subcategory, coreflective hull.
Read more about this topic: Reflective Subcategory
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