Categorical Realizations of Quivers

Abstract

We introduce and study categorical realizations of quivers. This construction generalizes comma categories and includes representations of quivers on categories, twisted representations of quivers and bilinear pairings as special cases. We prove a Krull-Schmidt Theorem in this general context, which results in a Krull-Schmidt Theorem for the special cases just mentioned. We also show that cancellation holds under milder assumptions. Using similar ideas we prove a version of Fitting's Lemma for natural transformations between functors.