The abelian closure of an exact category (Q2176102)

Exact categories, introduced by \textit{D. Quillen} [Lect. Notes Math. 341, 85--147 (1973; Zbl 0292.18004)] in the context of algebraic \(K\)-theory, have become indispensible for many branches of mathematics related to homological algebra. For an exact category \(\mathcal{A}\), \textit{M. Adelman} [J. Pure Appl. Algebra 3, 103--117 (1973; Zbl 0287.18009); J. Aust. Math. Soc., Ser. A 23, 275--283 (1977; Zbl 0392.18013)] proved the existence of an exact embedding \(\mathcal{A}\hookrightarrow \mathbf{Ab}(\mathcal{A})\) into a free abelian category over \(\mathcal{A}\). The author exhibits three constitutive exact subcategories of Adelman's free abelian category \(\mathbf{Ab}(\mathcal{A})\) over a Quillen exact category \(\mathcal{A}\), which provide an intrinsic description of \(\mathbf{Ab}(\mathcal{A})\) and encapsulate the mechanism of (finite or infinite) tilting. In general, two of these subcategories are left and right abelian, respectively, and a tilting adjunction takes place between them if they are abelian. The third category \(\mathbf{Im}(\mathcal{A})\) contains the acyclic closure \(\mathbf{T}(\mathcal{A})\) of \(\mathcal{A}\) as an exact subcategory of those objects which arise as images of the morphisms in an exact complex over \(\mathcal{A}\). If the exact structure of \(\mathcal{A}\) is trivial, \(\mathbf{T}(\mathcal{A})\) consists of the Gorenstein projectives over \(\mathcal{A}\), a category that does not depend on an embedding of \(\mathcal{A}\) into some ambient abelian category. The construction of \(\mathbf{Ab}(\mathcal{A})\) and its intrinsic description sheds some light upon old and new concepts and results concerning Gruson-Jensen duality, resolving subcategories, representations of Cohen-Macaulay orders, Gorenstein projectivity, non-commutative resolutions, and representation dimension.