Monadic forgetful functors and (non-)presentability for $C^{\ast }$- and $W^{\ast }$-algebras

Abstract

We prove that the forgetful functors from the categories of $C^{\ast }$- and $W^{\ast }$-algebras to Banach $\ast$-algebras, Banach algebras or Banach spaces are all monadic, answering a question of J.Rosický, and that the categories of unital (commutative) $C^{\ast }$-algebras are not locally-isometry ${\aleph }_0$-generated either as plain or as metric-enriched categories, answering a question of I. Di Liberti and Rosický. We also prove a number of negative presentability results for the category of von Neumann algebras: not only is that category not locally presentable, but in fact its only presentable objects are the two algebras of dimension $\le 1$. For the same reason, for a locally compact abelian group $\mathbb{G}$ the category of $\mathbb{G}$-graded von Neumann algebras is not locally presentable.

minor typo fixes; 23 pages + references