Waldhausen Category

In mathematics a Waldhausen category (after Friedhelm Waldhausen) is a category C with a zero object equipped with cofibrations co(C) and weak equivalences we(C), both containing all isomorphisms, both compatible with pushout, and co(C) containing the unique morphisms

from the zero-object to any object A.

To be more precise about the pushouts, we require when

is a cofibration and

is any map, that we have a push-out

where the map

is a cofibration:

A category C is equipped with bifibrations if it has cofibrations and its opposite category COP has so also. In that case, we denote the fibrations of COP by quot(C). In that case, C is a biWaldhausen category if C has bifibrations and weak equivalences such that both (C, co(C), we) and (COP, quot(C), weOP) are Waldhausen categories.

As examples one may think of exact categories, where the cofibrations are the admissible monomorphisms. Another example is the full subcategory of bifibrant objects in a pointed model categories, that is, the full subcategory consisting of those objects for which is a cofibration and is a fibration.

Waldhausen and biWaldhausen categories are linked with algebraic K-theory. There, many interesting categories are complicial biWaldhausen categories. For example: The category of bounded chaincomplexes on an exact category The category of functors when is so. And given a diagram, then is a nice complicial biWaldhausen category when is.