A homological bridge between finite and infinite-dimensional representations of algebras (Q1283763)

Let \(\Lambda\) be an Artin algebra, \(\Lambda\text{-Mod}\) denotes the category of all left \(\Lambda\)-modules and \(\Lambda\text{-mod}\) the category of all finitely generated left \(\Lambda\)-modules. Let \({\mathcal P}^{<\infty}(\Lambda\text{-Mod})\) and \({\mathcal P}^{<\infty}(\Lambda\text{-mod})\) be, respectively, the full subcategories of \(\Lambda\text{-Mod}\) and \(\Lambda\text{-mod}\), whose objects are those that have finite projective dimension. Consider now the left big and little finitistic dimension of \(\Lambda\) that are defined, respectively, in the following way: \[ \begin{aligned} l\text{Fin.dim }\Lambda:&=\sup\{\text{pd }X:X\text{ in }{\mathcal P}^{<\infty}(\Lambda\text{-Mod})\} \text{ and}\\ l\text{fin.dim }\Lambda:&=\sup\{\text{pd }X:X\text{ in }{\mathcal P}^{<\infty}(\Lambda\text{-mod})\}.\end{aligned} \] The first finitistic dimension problem was set several decades ago to affording a measure for the homological complexity of \(\Lambda\): does \(l\text{Fin.dim }\Lambda\) coincide with \(l\text{fin.dim }\Lambda\)? The authors state that the conjecture is valid, under the hypothesis that the subcategory \({\mathcal P}^{<\infty}(\Lambda\text{-mod})\) is contravariantly finite. This result allows them to provide a nice information on the structure of the non-finitely generated modules in \({\mathcal P}^{<\infty}(\Lambda\text{-Mod})\), still under the same hypothesis of homological finiteness of \({\mathcal P}^{<\infty}(\Lambda\text{-mod})\): each module in \({\mathcal P}^{<\infty}(\Lambda\text{-Mod})\) is a direct limit of modules in \({\mathcal P}^{<\infty}(\Lambda\text{-mod})\). The authors also note that their result is not left-right symmetric, by presenting a finite dimensional monomial algebra over a field such that \({\mathcal P}^{<\infty}\) is contravariantly finite on the right side, nevertheless its left big and left little finitistic dimensions are distinct.