Abelian right perpendicular subcategories in module categories (1705.04960v8)

Abstract: We show that an abelian category can be exactly, fully faithfully embedded into a module category as the right perpendicular subcategory to a set of modules or module morphisms if and only if it is a locally presentable abelian category with a projective generator, or in other words, the category of models of an additive algebraic theory of possibly infinite bounded arity. This includes the categories of contramodules over topological rings and other examples. Various versions of the definition of the right perpendicular subcategory are considered, all leading to the same class of abelian categories. We also discuss sufficient conditions under which the natural forgetful functors from the categories of contramodules to the related categories of modules are fully faithful.