In mathematics, Serre and localizing subcategories form important classes of subcategories of an abelian category. Localizing subcategories are certain Serre subcategories. They are strongly linked to the notion of a quotient category.
Let be an abelian category. A non-empty full subcategory is called a Serre subcategory (or also a dense subcategory), if for every short exact sequence in the object is in if and only if the objects and belong to . In words: is closed under subobjects, quotient objects and extensions.