An axiomatic survey of diagram lemmas for non-abelian group-like structures (Q1950640)

The snake lemma, the \(3\times 3\) lemma, and the 5-lemma are basic tools of abelian homological algebra. It is well known that they can be adapted to some more non-abelian settings. In this paper, the axiomatic properties of structures for which such diagram lemmas hold is investigated and it is shown that they are linked to the property of normal subtractivity. This property involves both \textit{normality} (essentially that every coequaliser is a cokernel) and \textit{subtractivity}, which is stated (in a suitable context) as follows: For any two morphisms, \(s_1:S\to X\) and \(s_2: S\to Y\) and any two elements \(a,b \in S\), if \(s_1(a) = s_1(b)\) and \(s_2(b)= 0\), then there is an element \(c\in S\) such that \(s_2(a)= s_2(c)\) and \(s_1(c)=0\). (The name comes from its use in the theory of varieties in universal algebra. The variety is subtractive if its operations include a binary one \(s\) and a nullary term 0 such that \(s(x,x)=0\) and \(s(x,0)=x\), corresponding to \(s(x,y)= x-y\) in the case of abelian groups.)