Harder-Narasimhan categories (Q1039771)

In this interesting paper the author generalizes the proofs for the existence of Harder-Narasim\-han filtrations in various categories and explains an interesting and satisfying approach to an open question of functoriality of Harder-Narasimhan structures. By introducing the notion of a Harder-Narasimhan category he provides a minimal requirement of data with certain properties that suffice to construct the analogue of the classically known filtration on vector bundles such that successive quotients are semistable and slope inequalities hold. The starting point is a generalization of Quillen's notion of an exact category, which is of independent interest. In order to include the important example of Hermitian vector bundles in Arakelov geometry, the author introduces the notion of a geometric exact category which requires an additional geometric structure on the objects. Most important examples are Hermitian structures on vector spaces, ultranormed spaces and filtrations in abelian categories. For a Harder-Narasimhan category one requires a degree and rank function on objects which allows to define a general slope. Given the existence of a destabilizing object the author deduces a general proof of an abstract Harder-Narasimhan filtration on every non-zero geometric object. This unifies the known proofs for the most prominent examples of filtered \((\varphi,N)\)-modules and Hermitian adelic bundles. The final section discusses functoriality of Harder-Narasimhan structures and shows that functoriality is equivalent to a certain slope inequality. In particular, the author explains as a counter-example for functoriality the category of vector spaces with two different norms as geometric structures.