The intrinsic fundamental group of a linear category (Q1926565)

The main aim of the present paper is to provide a fundamental group \(\pi_1\) associated to a \(k\)-category \(\mathcal{B}\) over a commutative ring \(k\) such that the definition of this group does not depend on a particular presentation of the category by generators and relations. This is realized as the automorphism group of the fibre functor associated to Galois coverings of the initial category (Definition 4.1). It is proved in Theorem 4.6 that if the category admits a universal covering \(U\) then this fundamental group is isomorphic to \(\mathrm{Aut}_1(U)\). In the last part of the paper the authors prove that there exists a canonical embedding from the additive characters of \(\pi_1\) into the first Hochschild-Mitchell cohomology vector space of \(\mathcal{B}\) (Theorem 5.10).