Definable Additive Categories: Purity and Model Theory

Book excerpt: Most of the model theory of modules works, with only minor modifications, in much more general additive contexts (such as functor categories, categories of comodules, categories of sheaves). Furthermore, even within a given category of modules, many subcategories form a ``self-sufficient'' context in which the model theory may be developed without reference to the larger category of modules. The notion of a definable additive category covers all these contexts. The (imaginaries) language which one uses for model theory in a definable additive category can be obtained from the category (of structures and homomorphisms) itself, namely, as the category of those functors to the category of abelian groups which commute with products and direct limits. Dually, the objects of the definable category--the modules (or functors, or comodules, or sheaves)--to which that model theory applies may be recovered as the exact functors from the, small abelian, category (the category of pp-imaginaries) which underlies that language.