Localizations of the category of $A_\infty$ categories and internal Homs

Abstract

We prove that the localizations of the categories of dg categories, of cohomologically unital and strictly unital $A_\infty$ categories with respect to the corresponding classes of quasi-equivalences are all equivalent. Moreover we show that the last two localizations are equivalent to the corresponding quotients by the relation of being isomorphic in the cohomology of the $A_\infty$ category of $A_\infty$ functors. As an application we give a complete proof of a claim by Kontsevich stating that the category of internal Homs for two dg categories can be described as the category of strictly unital $A_\infty$ functors between them.