Representation of n-abelian categories in abelian categories

Abstract

Let $\mathcal{M}$ be a small $n$-abelian category. We show that the category of absolutely pure group valued functors over $\mathcal{M}$, denote by ${\mathcal{L}}_2(\mathcal{M},\mathcal{G})$, is an abelian category and $\mathcal{M}$ is equivalent to a full subcategory of ${\mathcal{L}}_2(\mathcal{M},\mathcal{G})$ in such a way that $n$-kernels and $n$-cokernels are precisely exact sequences of ${\mathcal{L}}_2(\mathcal{M},\mathcal{G})$ with terms in $\mathcal{M}$. This gives a higher-dimensional version of the Freyd-Mitchell embedding theorem for $n$-abelian categories.