The most commonly known triangulated categories arise from chain complexes in an abelian category by passing to chain homotopy classes or inverting quasi-isomorphisms. Such examples are called `algebraic' because they originate from abelian (or at least additive) categories. Stable homotopy theory produces examples of triangulated categories by quite different means, and in this context the source categories are usually very `non-additive' before passing to homotopy classes of morphisms. Because of their origin I refer to these examples as `topological triangulated categories'.
In these extended talk notes I explain some systematic differences between these two kinds of triangulated categories. There are certain properties -- defined entirely in terms of the triangulated structure -- which hold in all algebraic examples, but which fail in some topological ones. These differences are all torsion phenomena, and rationally there is no difference between algebraic and topological triangulated categories.
We prove the existence of various adelic-style models for rigidly small-generated tensor-triangulated categories whose Balmer spectrum is a one-dimensional Noetherian topological space. This special case of our general programme of giving adelic models is particularly concrete and accessible, and we illustrate it with examples from algebra, geometry, topology and representation theory. This version: minor improvements, additional references and examples.
In this paper we explain certain systematic differences between algebraic and topological triangulated categories. A triangulated category is algebraic if it admits a differential graded model, and topological if it admits a model in the form of a stable cofibration category. The precise statements use the 'n-order' of a triangulated category, for a natural number n. The n-order is a non-negative integer (or infinity) and measures `how strongly' n annihilates objects of the form Y/n. We show the following results: the n-order of an algebraic triangulated category is infinite; for every prime p…
We introduce the notion of a prile of one-sided triangulated categories. Roughly speaking, a prile consists of two one-sided triangulated categories having a common full subcategory which inherits a pretriangulated structure from these ambient categories. The main example arises from exact model categories. This allows us to recover the pretriangulated structure of the homotoy category of an exact model category.
We study the problem of when triangulated categories admit unique infinity-categorical enhancements. Our results use Lurie's theory of prestable infinity-categories to give conceptual proofs of, and in many cases strengthen, previous work on the subject by Lunts--Orlov and Canonaco--Stellari. We also give a wide range of examples involving quasi-coherent sheaves, categories of almost modules, and local cohomology to illustrate the theory of prestable infinity-categories. Finally, we propose a theory of stable $n$-categories which would interpolate between triangulated categories and stable inf…
We show how matrix problems (bimodule categories) can be used in studying triangulated categories. Then we apply the general technique to the classification of stable homotopy types of polyhedra, find out the "representation types" of such problems and give a description of stable homotopy types in finite and tame cases.
For every regular cardinal $α$, we construct a cofibrantly generated Quillen model structure on a category whose objects are essentially DG categories which are stable under suspensions, cosuspensions, cones and $α$-small sums. Using results of Porta, we show that the category of well-generated (algebraic) triangulated categories in the sense of Neeman is naturally enhanced by our Quillen model category.
We exhibit examples of triangulated categories which are neither the stable category of a Frobenius category nor a full triangulated subcategory of the homotopy category of a stable model category. Even more drastically, our examples do not admit any non-trivial exact functors to or from these algebraic respectively topological triangulated categories.
These notes provide an introduction to the theory of localization for triangulated categories. Localization is a machinery to formally invert morphisms in a category. We explain this formalism in some detail and we show how it is applied to triangulated categories.
The concept of a morphism determined by an object provides a method to construct or classify morphisms in a fixed category. We show that this works particularly well for triangulated categories having Serre duality. Another application of this concept arises from a reformulation of Freyd's generating hypothesis.
We give a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of an enhancement of a finite triangulated category. Moreover, we show that enhancements are unique when they exist, up to Morita equivalence.
We prove a stronger version of the octahedral axiom in a pre-triangulated category. The proof uses a new lemma about exact sequences in pointed additive categories which is based on a weak converse of the snake lemma.
We consider triangulated orbit categories, with the motivating example of cluster categories, in their usual context of algebraic triangulated categories, then present them from another perspective in the framework of topological triangulated categories.
For a triangulated category A with a 2-periodic dg-enhancement and a triangulated oriented marked surface S we introduce a dg-category F(S,A) parametrizing systems of exact triangles in A labelled by triangles of S. Our main result is that F(S,A) is independent on the choice of a triangulation of S up to essentially unique Morita equivalence. In particular, it admits a canonical action of the mapping class group. The proof is based on general properties of cyclic 2-Segal spaces. In the simplest case, where A is the category of 2-periodic complexes of vector spaces, F(S,A) turns out to be a pur…
Consider a monad on an idempotent complete triangulated category with the property that its Eilenberg-Moore category of modules inherits a triangulation. We show that any other triangulated adjunction realizing this monad is 'essentially monadic', i.e. becomes monadic after performing the two evident necessary operations of taking the Verdier quotient by the kernel of the right adjoint and idempotent completion. In this sense, the monad itself is 'intrinsically monadic'. It follows that for any highly structured ring spectrum, its category of homotopy (a.k.a. naive) modules is triangulated if …
An alternative approach to the classical Morel-Voevodsky stable motivic homotopy theory $SH(k)$ is suggested. The triangulated category of framed bispectra $SH_{nis}^{fr}(k)$ and effective framed bispectra $SH_{nis}^{fr,eff}(k)$ are introduced in the paper. Both triangulated categories only use Nisnevich local equivalences and have nothing to do with any kind of motivic equivalences. It is shown that $SH_{nis}^{fr}(k)$ and $SH_{nis}^{fr,eff}(k)$ recover the classical Morel-Voevodsky triangulated categories of bispectra $SH(k)$ and effective bispectra $SH^{eff}(k)$ respectively. We also recover…
We introduce the notion of a rank function on a triangulated category $\mathcal{C}$ which generalizes the Sylvester rank function in the case when $\mathcal{C}=\operatorname{Perf}(A)$ is the perfect derived category of a ring $A$. We show that rank functions are closely related to functors into simple triangulated categories and classify Verdier quotients into simple triangulated categories in terms of particular rank functions called localizing. If $\mathcal{C}=\operatorname{Perf}(A)$ as above, localizing rank functions also classify finite homological epimorphisms from $A$ into differential …
In this survey we explain the results of the recent article arXiv:1806.06471. Following a 1973 article by Lawvere one can define metrics on categories, and following Kelly's 1982 book one can complete a category with respect to its metric. We specialize these general constructions to triangulated categories, and restrict our attention to "good metrics". And the remarkable new theorem is that, when we start with a triangulated category $\mathcal S$ with a good metric, its completion $\mathfrak{L}(\mathcal{S})$ contains an interesting subcategory $\mathfrak{S}(\mathcal{S})$ which is always trian…
Small, finite entities are easier and simpler to manipulate than gigantic, infinite ones. Consequently huge chunks of mathematics are devoted to methods reducing the study of big, cumbersome objects to an analysis of their finite building blocks. The manifestation of this general pattern, in the study of derived and triangulated categories, dates back almost to the beginnings of the subject -- more precisely to articles by Illusie in SGA6, way back in the early 1970s. What's new, at least new in the world of derived and triangulated categories, is that one gets extra mileage from analysing mor…
We develop Tannaka duality theory for dg categories. To any dg functor from a dg category $\mathcal{A}$ to finite-dimensional complexes, we associate a dg coalgebra $C$ via a Hochschild homology construction. When the dg functor is faithful, this gives a quasi-equivalence between the derived dg categories of $\mathcal{A}$-modules and of $C$-comodules. When $\mathcal{A}$ is Morita fibrant (i.e. an idempotent-complete pre-triangulated category), it is thus quasi-equivalent to the derived dg category of compact $C$-comodules. We give several applications for motivic Galois groups.
In this paper we relate triangulated category structures to the cohomology of small categories and define initial obstructions to the existence of an algebraic or topological enhancement. We show that these obstructions do not vanish in an example of triangulated category without models. We also obtain cohomological characterizations of pre-triangulated DG, A-infinity, and spectral categories.
We show that a well behaved Noetherian, finite dimensional, stable, monoidal model category is equivalent to a model built from categories of modules over completed rings in an adelic fashion. For abelian groups this is based on the Hasse square, for chromatic homotopy theory this is based on the chromatic fracture square, and for rational torus-equivariant homotopy theory this is the model of Greenlees-Shipley arXiv:1101.2511.
We prove that the Balmer spectrum of a tensor triangulated category is homeomorphic to the Zariski spectrum of its graded central ring, provided the triangulated category is generated by its tensor unit and the graded central ring is noetherian and regular in a weak sense. There follows a classification of all thick subcategories, and the result extends to the compactly generated setting to yield a classification of all localizing subcategories as well as the analog of the telescope conjecture. This generalizes results of Shamir for commutative ring spectra.
In this survey we present the relatively new concept of \emph{approximable triangulated categories.} We will show that the definition is natural, that it leads to powerful new results, and that it throws new light on old, familiar objects. In particular: a recent theorem says that the category $D_{\text{qc}}(X)$ is approximable whenever $X$ is a quasicompact separated scheme. As corollaries of this (seemingly technical) statement one can prove striking improvements on old theorems by Bondal, Rickard, Rouquier and Van den Bergh, about the (much smaller) categories $D^{\text{perf}}(X)$ and $D^b_…
We show that Quillen's small object argument works for exact categories under very mild conditions. This has immediate applications to cotorsion pairs and their relation to the existence of certain triangulated adjoint functors and model structures. In particular, the interplay of different exact structures on the category of complexes of quasi-coherent sheaves leads to a streamlined and generalized version of recent results obtained by Estrada, Gillespie, Guil Asensio, Hovey, Jørgensen, Neeman, Murfet, Prest, Trlifaj and possibly others.
