Hermitian categories, extension of scalars and systems of sesquilinear forms (Q461294)

Sesquilinear and Hermitian forms can, as in this paper, be studied through a category theoretical approach, using the notion of a \textit{Hermitian category}. The latter is a triple \((\mathcal{C},\ast,\omega)\) consisting of an additive category \(\mathcal{C}\), a contravariant functor \(\ast: \mathcal{C}\to \mathcal{C}\) and a natural transformation \(\omega : \mathrm{id}\to \ast\ast\) satisfying \(\omega_C^\ast \omega_{C^\ast}=\mathrm{id}_{C^\ast}\) for all \(C\in \mathcal{C}\). A \textit{sesquilinear form} over \((\mathcal{C},\ast,\omega)\) is a pair \((C,s)\) of an object of \(\mathcal{C}\) and a morphism \(s: C \to C^\ast\). A sesquilinear form \((C,s)\) is called Hermitian (and unimodular), if \(s=s^\ast\omega_C\) (and these morphisms happen to be invertible). The most important example is formed by the Hermitian category associated to a ring with involution \((A,\sigma)\), where \(\mathcal{C}\) is the category of right \(A\)-modules and \(\ast\) takes a right \(A\)-module to its dual. Here sesquilinear and (unimodular) Hermitian forms correspond to the classical notion. The first main result of the paper states that, for any Hermitian category \((\mathcal{C},\ast,\omega)\), the category of sesquilinear forms is equivalent to the category of unimodular Hermitian forms over another Hermitian category \(\mathcal{C}'\), called the \textit{category of twisted double arrows} in \(\mathcal{C}\). The latter Hermitian category is \textit{reflexive}, i.e., the corresponding natural transformation \(\omega'\) is a natural isomorphism. This extends a result from a paper from the first and third authors [J. Pure Appl. Math. 218, No. 3, 417--423 (2014; Zbl 1307.11046)], in which \((\mathcal{C},\ast,\omega)\) comes from a ring with involution as above. This paper also served as a starting point for many other results of the present paper. Moreover the above equivalence is extended to systems of sesquilinear forms \((M,(s_i)_{i\in I})\). Here the forms in the system can be defined with respect to different Hermitian structures \((\ast_i, \omega_i)\) on the given additive category. This equivalence is then used to prove a Witt cancellation theorem and other results like Hasse principle, Springer theorem and some finiteness results for systems of sesquilinear forms.