On coalgebras over algebras

Abstract

We extend Barr's well-known characterization of the final coalgebra of a $Set$-endofunctor as the completion of its initial algebra to the Eilenberg-Moore category of algebras for a $Set$-monad $\mathbf{M}$ for functors arising as liftings. As an application we introduce the notion of commuting pair of endofunctors with respect to the monad $\mathbf{M}$ and show that under reasonable assumptions, the final coalgebra of one of the endofunctors involved can be obtained as the free algebra generated by the initial algebra of the other endofunctor.