Shift equivalence and a category equivalence involving graded modules over path algebras of quivers

Abstract: In this paper we associate an abelian category to a finite directed graph and prove the categories arising from two graphs are equivalent if the incidence matrices of the graphs are shift equivalent. The abelian category is the quotient of the category of graded vector space representations of the quiver obtained by making the graded representations that are the sum of their finite dimensional submodules isomorphic to zero. Actually, the main result in this paper is that the abelian categories are equivalent if the incidence matrices are strong shift equivalent. That result is combined with an earlier result of the author to prove that if the incidence matrices are shift equivalent, then the associated abelian categories are equivalent. Given William's Theorem that subshifts of finite type associated to two directed graphs are conjugate if and only if the graphs are strong shift equivalent, our main result can be reformulated as follows: if the subshifts associated to two directed graphs are conjugate, then the categories associated to those graphs are equivalent.