Axiomatizing subcategories of Abelian categories

We investigate how to characterize subcategories of abelian categories in terms of intrinsic axioms. In particular, we find axioms which characterize generating cogenerating functorially finite subcategories, precluster tilting subcategories, and cluster tilting subcategories of abelian categories. As a consequence we prove that any d-abelian category is equivalent to a d-cluster tilting subcategory of an abelian category, without any assumption on the categories being projectively generated. (c) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).