THE YONEDA EXT AND ARBITRARY COPRODUCTS IN ABELIAN CATEGORIES

Abstract

Abstract There are well-known identities involving the Ext bifunctor, coproducts, and products in AB4 abelian categories with enough projectives. Namely, for every such category \[\mathcal{A}\] , given an object X and a set of objects \[{\{ {{\text{A}}_{\text{i}}}\} _{{\text{i}} \in {\text{I}}}}\] , an isomorphism \[Ext_\mathcal{A}^{\text{n}}({ \oplus _{{\text{i}} \in {\text{I}}}}{{\text{A}}_{\text{i}}},{\text{X}}) \cong \prod\nolimits_{{\text{i}} \in {\text{I}}} {Ext_\mathcal{A}^{\text{n}}({{\text{A}}_{\text{i}}},{\text{X}})} \] can be built, where \[Ex{t^{\text{n}}}\] is the nth derived functor of the Hom functor. The goal of this paper is to show a similar isomorphism for the nth Yoneda Ext, which is a functor equivalent to \[Ex{t^{\text{n}}}\] that can be defined in more general contexts. The desired isomorphism is constructed explicitly by using colimits in AB4 abelian categories with not necessarily enough projectives nor injectives, extending a result by Colpi and Fuller in [8]. Furthermore, the isomorphisms constructed are used to characterize AB4 categories. A dual result is also stated.