The category of extensions and a characterisation of \(n\)-exangulated functors (Q6060820)

Additive categories hold a fundamental position in mathematics and related fields. When equipped with a additive bifunctor, they can produce a category of extensions that encodes important structural information. In this paper, the authors study the relations between functors in the category of extensions and those in the original categories. This study becomes particularly fruitful when the additive categories in question are \(n\)-exangulated, as it allows for a characterization of \(n\)-exangulated functors. Their approach offers a 2-categorical perspective on \(n\)-exangulated categories, introducing \(n\)-exangulated natural transformations and characterizing them using categories of extensions. With these characterizations, they establish a 2-functor between the 2-categories of small \(n\)-exangulated categories and small exact categories. Furthermore, they prove a similar result without requiring smallness assumptions. By utilizing their results, they provide various examples of \(n\)-exangulated functors and natural transformations. Although their motivation arises from representation theory and the study of \(n\)-exangulated categories, their findings have broad applications. Many results only necessitate an additive category with a biadditive functor, with no additional assumptions, while others can be applied by equipping an additive category with its split \(n\)-exangulated structure.