On weakly negative subcategories, weight structures, and (weakly) approximable triangulated categories

Abstract

We prove that certain triangulated categories are (weakly) approximable in the sense of A. Neeman. We prove that a triangulated $C$ that is compactly generated by a single object $G$ is weakly approximable if $C(G,G[i])=0$ for $i>1$ (we say that $G$ is weakly negative if this assumption is fulfilled; the case where the equality $C(G,G[1])=0$ is fulfilled as well was mentioned by Neeman himself). Moreover, if $G\cong {⨁}_{0\le i\le n}{G}_i$ and $C(G_i,G_j[1])=0$ whenever $i\le j$ then $C$ is also approximable. The latter result can be useful since (under a few more additional assumptions) it allows to characterize a certain explicit subcategory of $C$ as the category of finite cohomological functors from the subcategory $C^c$ of compact objects of $C$ into $R$-modules (for a noetherian commutative ring $R$ such that $C$ is $R$-linear). One may apply this statement to the construction of certain adjoint functors and $t$-structures. Our proof of (weak) approximability of $C$ under the aforementioned assumptions is closely related to (weight decompositions for) certain (weak) weight structures, and we discuss this relationship in detail.

This note justifies and extends an important remark of A. Neeman, and relates it to so-called weak weight structures. Comments are really welcome!