Coinverters and categories of fractions for categories with structure

A category of fractions is a special case of acoinverter in the 2-categoryCat. We observe that, in a cartesian closed 2-category, the product of tworeflexive coinverter diagrams is another such diagram. It follows that an equational structure on a categoryA, if given by operationsA ⁿ A forn N along with natural transformations and equations, passes canonically to the categoryA [^–1] of fractions, provided that is closed under the operations. We exhibit categories with such structures as algebras for a class of 2-monads onCat, to be calledstrongly finitary monads.The first and third authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Australian Research Council.     

Hausdorff separation in categories

Considering subobjects, points and a closure operator in an abstract category, we introduce a generalization of the Hausdorff separation axiom for topological spaces: the notion ofT ₂-object. We discuss the properties ofT ₂-objects, which depend essentially on the behaviour of points, and finally we relate them to the well-known separated objects.The results of this paper are essentially taken from the author's Ph. D. Thesis written under the supervision of Professors M. Sobral and W. Tholen and partially supported by a scholarship of I.N.I.C.-Instituto Nacional de Investigação Científica.     

Homotopy limits of model categories over inverse index categories

In this note we give a model category theoretic interpretation of the homotopy colimit of the diagram of simplicial localizations coming from a diagram of model categories in the case of an inverse indexing category.     

Krull-Schmidt decompositions for thick subcategories

Following H. Krause [Decomposing thick subcategories of the stable module category, Math. Ann. 313 (1) (1999) 95-108], we prove Krull-Schmidt type decomposition theorems for thick subcategories of various triangulated categories including the derived categories of rings, Noetherian stable homotopy categories, stable module categories over Hopf algebras, and the stable homotopy category of spectra. In all these categories, it is shown that the thick ideals of small objects decompose uniquely into indecomposable thick ideals. We also discuss some consequences of these decomposition results. In particular, it is shown that all these decompositions respect K-theory.     

On the direct image of intersections in exact homological categories

Given a regular epimorphism f:X?Y in an exact homological category C, and a pair (U,V) of kernel subobjects of X, we show that the quotient (f(U)∩f(V))/f(U∩V) is always abelian. When C is nonpointed, i.e. only exact protomodular, the translation of the previous result is that, given any pair (R,S) of equivalence relations on X, the difference mappingδ:Y/f(R∩S)?Y/(f(R)∩f(S)) has an abelian kernel relation. This last result actually holds true in any exact Mal'cev category. Setting Y=X/T, this result says that the difference mapping determined by the inclusion T∪(R∩S)?(T∪R)∩(T∪S) has an abelian kernel relation, which casts a new light on the congruence distributive property.     

Properties of abelian categories via recollements

A recollement is a decomposition of a given category (abelian or triangulated) into two subcategories with functorial data that enables the glueing of structural information. This paper is dedicated to investigating the behaviour under glueing of some basic properties of abelian categories (well-poweredness, Grothendieck's axioms AB3, AB4 and AB5, existence of a generator) in the presence of a recollement. In particular, we observe that in a recollement of a Grothendieck abelian category the other two categories involved are also Grothendieck abelian and, more significantly, we provide an example where the converse does not hold and explore multiple sufficient conditions for it to hold.     

Exactness of direct limits for abelian categories with an injective cogenerator

We prove that the exactness of direct limits in an abelian category with products and an injective cogenerator J is equivalent to a condition on J which is well-known to characterize pure-injectivity in module categories, and we describe an application of this result to the tilting theory. We derive our result as a consequence of a more general characterization of when inverse limits in the Eilenberg–Moore category of a monad on the category of sets preserve regular epimorphisms.     

On the cohomology rings of small categories

Let C be a small category and R a commutative ring with identity. The cohomology ring of C with coefficients in R is defined as the cohomology ring of the topological realization of its nerve. First we give an example showing that this ring modulo nilpotents is not finitely generated in general, even when the category is finite EI. Then we study the relationship between the cohomology ring of a category and those of its subcategories and extensions. The main results generalize certain theorems in group cohomology theory.     

Finitely semisimple spherical categories and modular categories are self-dual

We show that every essentially small finitely semisimple k-linear additive spherical category for which k=End(1) is a field, is equivalent to its dual over the long canonical forgetful functor. This includes the special case of modular categories. In order to prove this result, we show that the universal coend of the spherical category, with respect to the long forgetful functor, is self-dual as a Weak Hopf Algebra.     

Incidence categories

Given a family F of posets closed under disjoint unions and the operation of taking convex subposets, we construct a category C_F called the incidence category ofF. This category is “nearly abelian” in the sense that all morphisms have kernels/cokernels, and possesses a symmetric monoidal structure akin to direct sum. The Ringel-Hall algebra of C_F is isomorphic to the incidence Hopf algebra of the collection P(F) of order ideals of posets in F. This construction generalizes the categories introduced by K. Kremnizer and the author, in the case when F is the collection of posets coming from rooted forests or Feynman graphs.     

Bounds on the global dimension of certain piecewise hereditary categories

We give bounds on the global dimension of a finite length, piecewise hereditary category in terms of quantitative connectivity properties of its graph of indecomposables.We use this to show that the global dimension of a finite-dimensional, piecewise hereditary algebra A cannot exceed 3 if A is an incidence algebra of a finite poset or more generally, a sincere algebra. This bound is tight.     

Definable categories

We introduce the notion of a definable category–a category equivalent to a full subcategory of a locally finitely presentable category that is closed under products, directed colimits and pure subobjects. Definable subcategories are precisely the finite-injectivity classes. We prove a 2-duality between the 2-category of small exact categories and the 2-category of definable categories, and provide a new proof of its additive version. We further introduce a third vertex of the 2-category of regular toposes and show that the diagram of 2-(anti-)equivalences between three 2-categories commutes; the corresponding additive triangle is well-known.     

Exact categories

We survey the basics of homological algebra in exact categories in the sense of Quillen. All diagram lemmas are proved directly from the axioms, notably the five lemma, the 3×3$3\times 3$-lemma and the snake lemma. We briefly discuss exact functors, idempotent completion and weak idempotent completeness. We then show that it is possible to construct the derived category of an exact category without any embedding into abelian categories and we sketch Deligne's approach to derived functors. The construction of classical derived functors with values in an abelian category painlessly translates to exact categories, i.e., we give proofs of the comparison theorem for projective resolutions and the horseshoe lemma. After discussing some examples we elaborate on Thomason's proof of the Gabriel–Quillen embedding theorem in an appendix.     

The Krull-Schmidt Theorem in the Case Two

We study what happens if, in the Krull-Schmidt Theorem, instead of considering modules whose endomorphism rings have one maximal ideal, we consider modules whose endomorphism rings have two maximal ideals. If a ring has exactly two maximal right ideals, then the two maximal right ideals are necessarily two-sided. We call such a ring of type 2. The behavior of direct sums of finitely many modules whose endomorphism rings have type 2 is completely described by a graph whose connected components are either complete graphs or complete bipartite graphs. The vertices of the graphs are ideals in a suitable full subcategory of Mod-R. The edges are isomorphism classes of modules. The complete bipartite graphs give rise to a behavior described by a Weak Krull-Schmidt Theorem. Such a behavior had been previously studied for the classes of uniserial modules, biuniform modules, cyclically presented modules over a local ring, kernels of morphisms between indecomposable injective modules, and couniformly presented modules. All these modules have endomorphism rings that are either local or of type 2. Here we present a general theory that includes all these cases.     

Galois theory in variable categories

The order-reversing bijection between field extensions and subgroups of the Galois group G follows from the equivalence between the opposite of the category of étale algebras and the category of discrete G-spaces [2]. We show that the basic ingredient for this equivalence of categories, and for various known generalizations, is a factorization system for variable categories.     

Solid hulls of concrete categories

This paper deals with the problem of the existence of solid hulls for concrete categories. We present sufficient conditions for a concrete category to have a solid hull. For concrete categories over Set with a small finally dense subcategory, we observe that the existence of solid hulls is equivalent to Weak Vopenka's Principle.Research partially supported by TEMPUS JEP 2692 and by Centro de Matemática da Universidade de Coimbra     

On derived equivalences of categories of sheaves over finite posets

A finite poset X carries a natural structure of a topological space. Fix a field k, and denote by D^b(X) the bounded derived category of sheaves of finite dimensional k-vector spaces over X. Two posets X and Y are said to be derived equivalent if D^b(X) and D^b(Y) are equivalent as triangulated categories.We give explicit combinatorial properties of X which are invariant under derived equivalence; among them are the number of points, the Z-congruency class of the incidence matrix, and the Betti numbers. We also show that taking opposites and products preserves derived equivalence.For any closed subset Y⊆X, we construct a strongly exceptional collection in D^b(X) and use it to show an equivalence D^b(X)?D^b(A) for a finite dimensional algebra A (depending on Y). We give conditions on X and Y under which A becomes an incidence algebra of a poset.We deduce that a lexicographic sum of a collection of posets along a bipartite graph S is derived equivalent to the lexicographic sum of the same collection along the opposite .This construction produces many new derived equivalences of posets and generalizes other well-known ones.As a corollary we show that the derived equivalence class of an ordinal sum of two posets does not depend on the order of summands. We give an example that this is not true for three summands.