Formal completion of a category along a subcategory

Abstract

Following an idea of Kontsevich, we introduce and study the notion of formal completion of a compactly generated (by a set of objects) enhanced triangulated category along a full thick essentially small triangulated subcategory. In particular, we prove (answering a question of Kontsevich) that using categorical formal completion, one can obtain ordinary formal completions of Noetherian schemes along closed subschemes. Moreover, we show that Beilinson-Parshin adeles can be also obtained using categorical formal completion.