Definable functors between triangulated categories

Abstract

We systematically develop the theory of definable functors between compactly generated triangulated categories. Such functors preserve pure triangles, pure injective objects, and definable subcategories, and as such appear in a wide range of algebraic and topological settings. Firstly we investigate and characterise purity preserving functors from a triangulated category into a finitely accessible category with products, which we term coherent functors. This yields a new property for the restricted Yoneda embedding as the universal coherent functor. We build upon the utility of coherent functors to provide several equivalent conditions for an additive, not necessarily triangulated, functor between triangulated categories to be definable: a functor is definable if and only if it preserves filtered homology colimits and products, if and only if it uniquely extends along the restricted Yoneda embedding to a definable functor between the corresponding module categories. We apply these results to the functoriality of the Ziegler spectrum, an object of study in pure homological algebra and representation theory.