Epimorphisms of additive categories up to direct factors (Q2573484)

It is well-known that a ring homomorphism \(f: R\to S\) is a categorical epimorphism if and only if the induced functor \(f^\ast: S\text{-Mod}\to R\text{-Mod}\) is fully faithful. More generally, a similar statement holds when \(f\) is replaced by an additive functor \(F:\mathcal C\to\mathcal D\) between small pre-additive categories such that \(F\) is bijective on objects. The author starts out with the observation that any functor \(F\) admits a natural factorization \(F= F_1\circ F_0\) into a functor \(F_0:\mathcal C\to\mathcal D_0\) which is bijective on objects, followed by a full embedding \(F_1:\mathcal D_0\hookrightarrow\mathcal D\). He shows that \(F^\ast\) is fully faithful if and only if \(F_0\) is an epimorphism and \(\mathcal D= \text{add}\,\mathcal D_0\). Here we denote by \(\text{add}\,\mathcal D_0\) the full subcategory of \(\mathcal D\) with objects \(D\) such that the identity \(1_D\) belongs to the ideal \([\mathcal D_0]\) generated by the \(1_{X}\) with \(X\in\text{Ob}\,\mathcal D_0\). After proving this general result, the author defines a localization up to direct factors to be a localization \(\mathcal C\to\mathcal C[\Sigma]^{-1}\) with respect to an arbitrary class of morphisms \(\Sigma\subset\mathcal C\), followed by a full embedding \(\mathcal C[\Sigma]^{-1}\hookrightarrow\mathcal D\) with \(\mathcal D= \text{add}\,\mathcal C[\Sigma]^{-1}\). He gives some examples where this type of localization arises in connection with the telescope conjecture.