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 $G\cong \bigoplus_{0\le i\le n}G_i$ 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.