Fundamental group functors in descent-exact homological categories

Abstract

We study the notion of fundamental group in the framework of descent-exact homological categories. This setting is sufficiently wide to include several categories of "algebraic" nature such as the almost abelian categories, the semi-abelian categories, and the categories of topological semi-abelian algebras. For many adjunctions in this context, the fundamental groups are described by generalised Brown-Ellis-Hopf formulae for the integral homology of groups.