Projectivity of acts and morita equivalence of monoids

Abstract

In this paper we shall consider a non-additive category of A-modules, that is, instead of a ring A we take a monoid A which acts on sets from the left. These objects will be called A-acts. We investigate indecomposable A-acts and generators and characterize projectives in this category. For a given monoid A we describe all monoids B such that the category of B-acts is equivalent to the category of A-acts. In particular we find that equivalence of these categories yields an isomorphism between the monoids A and B if A is a group or finite or commutative. This differs from the additive case where the categories of modules over a commutative field and its ring of nxn matrices are equivalent. Finally we give examples of non-isomorphic monoids A and B such that the corresponding categories are equivalent.