Descent for quasi-coherent sheaves on stacks (Q2464759)

Following up her earlier papers on the subject, the author gives a homotopy theoretic characterization of sheaves on a stack \(\mathcal M\) on a small site \(\mathcal C\). The author works in a category of presheaves of groupoids on \(\mathcal C\) in which the fibrant objects are stacks. Previously the author has shown that it does not matter whether one works with actual presheaves of groupoids, lax presheaves or categories fibered in groupoids. If \(\mathcal M\) is a presheaf of groupoids on \(\mathcal C\), the category of sheaves on \(\mathcal M\) is defined to be \(Sh(\mathcal C/\mathcal M)\), the sheaves on the site \(\mathcal C/\mathcal M\), and it is shown that there is an embedding of \(Sh(\mathcal C/\mathcal M)\) in the homotopy category of the category of sheaves of groupoids over \(\mathcal M\). From this, the author deduces that a local weak equivalence \(\mathcal M\to\mathcal M'\) induces an equivalence of categories \(Sh(\mathcal C/\mathcal M)\to Sh(\mathcal C/\mathcal M')\). This also works for sheaves over simplicial sets, rings or modules. Generalizing the classical point of view where sheaves are described in terms of an atlas, the author proves that if \(i\mapsto \mathcal M_i\) is a functor from a small category \(I\) to the category of presheaves of groupoids on \(\mathcal C\), then there is an equivalence of categories \[ Sh(\mathcal C/(\mathrm{hocolim}\, \mathcal M_i))\to \mathrm{holim}\, Sh(\mathcal C/\mathcal M_i). \] Similar results are derived for quasi-coherent sheaves. As a corollary, this gives an alternative proof of the result that the category of comodules over a Hopf algebroid (viewed as a presheaf of groupoids on the flat affine site) only depends on the weak homotopy type of the Hopf algebroid [\textit{M. Hovey}, Am. J. Math. 124, No. 6, 1289--1318 (2002; Zbl 1033.55002)], since weak equivalences in the current context correspond to internal equivalences in the sense of \textit{A.~Joyal} and \textit{M. Tierney} [in: Category theory, Proc. Int. Conf., Como/Italy 1990, Lect. Notes Math. 1488, 213--236 (1991; Zbl 0748.18009)].