Representation Theory of an Infinite Quiver

This paper deals with the representation theory of a locally finite quiver in which the number of paths between any two given vertices is finite. We first study some properties of the finitely presented or co-presented representations, and then construct in the category of locally finite dimensional representations some almost split sequences which start with a finitely co-presented representation and end with a finitely presented representation. Furthermore, we obtain a general description of the shapes of the Auslander-Reiten components of the category of finitely presented representations and prove that the number of regular Auslander-Reiten components is infinite if and only if the quiver is not of finite or infinite Dynkin type. In the infinite Dynkin case, we shall give a complete list of the indecomposable representations and an explicit description of the Auslander-Reiten components. Finally, we apply these results to study the Auslander-Reiten theory in the derived category of bounded complexes of finitely presented representations.