The Hall algebra of the category of coherent sheaves on the projective line

Abstract

To an abelian category A of homological dimension 1 satisfying certain finiteness conditions, one can associate an algebra, called the Hall algebra. Kapranov studied this algebra when A is the category of coherent sheaves over a smooth projective curve defined over a finite field, and observed analogies with quantum affine algebras. We recover here in an elementary way his results in the case when the curve is the projective line.