Positive and negative extensions in extriangulated categories

TL;DR

This paper develops a theory of derived functors in extriangulated categories, introducing positive and negative extensions, and explores their properties, balance, and applications in various categorical contexts.

Contribution

It extends the concept of higher extensions and derived functors to extriangulated categories, including negative extensions and their universality, and analyzes conditions for balanced bifunctors.

Findings

Negative extensions give rise to universal δ-functors.

In certain categories, negative extensions are balanced and coincide with known structures.

Criteria for the existence of enough projective or injective morphisms are established.

Abstract

We initiate the study of derived functors in the setting of extriangulated categories. By using coends, we adapt Yoneda's theory of higher extensions to this framework. We show that, when there are enough projectives or enough injectives, thus defined extensions agree with the ones defined earlier via projective or injective resolutions. For categories with enough projective or enough injective morphisms, we prove that these are right derived functors of the $\operatorname{Hom}$-bifunctor in either argument. Since $\operatorname{Hom}$ is only half-exact in each argument, it is natural to expect "negative extensions", i.e. its left derived functors, to exist and not necessarily vanish. We define negative extensions with respect to the first and to the second argument and show that they give rise to universal $\delta$-functors, when there are enough projective or injective morphisms, respectively. In general, they are not balanced. However, for topological extriangulated categories, the existence of a balanced version of negative extensions follows from combining the work of Klemenc on exact $\infty$-categories with results of the second and third authors. We discuss various criteria under which one has the balance of the above bifunctors on the functorial or on the numerical levels. This happens, in particular, in the cases of exact or triangulated categories, and also in the case of the category of $n$-term complexes with projective components over a finite-dimensional algebra. Given a connected sequence of functors on an extriangulated category $(\mathcal{C},\mathbb{E},\mathfrak{s})$, we determine the maximal relative extriangulated structure, with respect to which the sequence is a $\delta$-functor. We also find several equivalent criteria for the existence of enough projective or injective morphisms in a given extriangulated category.