One-sided exact categories (Q1946175)

Exact categories are defined by Quillen-Keller axioms; in this paper, the authors use the one-sided part of these axioms to introduce a new notion as follows: An additive category \(\mathcal C\) with a distinguished class of kernels (called inflations and denoted by \(\rightarrowtail\)) is called a right exact category if the following axioms hold: [R0] The identity morphism \(1_0:0\longrightarrow 0\) is an inflation; [R1] The composition of any two inflations is an inflation; [R2] The pushout of every inflation along an arbitrary morphism exists and is again an inflation. \(\mathcal C\) is strongly right exact if it also satisfies [R3]: If \(i:A\longrightarrow B\) and \(p:B\longrightarrow C\) are morphisms in \(\mathcal C\) such that \(i\) has a cokernel and \(p\) is an inflation, then \(i\) is an inflation. \(\mathcal C\) is (strongly) exact iff it is (strongly) left and right exact. Right (left) exact is a superclass of strongly right (left) exact, which is a superclass of Quillen exact. The authors demonstrate some constructions of one-sided exact structures that are not straightforward clones of the proofs for exact structures. Inspired by work of \textit{T. Bühler} [Expo. Math. 28, No. 1, 1--69 (2010; Zbl 1192.18007)], the authors study how conflations behave with respect to direct sums and pushouts in right exact categories, and then prove the short five lemma and the 3 by 3 lemma in a (strongly) right exact category. Some of the results require the assumption of stronger axioms than others. Furthermore, the authors use characterizations of sections in weakly idempotent complete categories to obtain a generalization (in the right exact categories) of a result of \textit{M. Saorín} and \textit{J. Št'ovíček} [Adv. Math. 228, No. 2, 968--1007 (2011; Zbl 1235.18010)] in exact categories. The authors also show that the derived category of a right exact category can be constructed.