Hearts of t-structures in the derived category of a commutative Noetherian ring

TL;DR

This paper characterizes hearts of t-structures in derived categories of commutative Noetherian rings, showing they are Grothendieck categories or module categories under certain conditions, with geometric implications for schemes.

Contribution

It identifies conditions under which hearts of t-structures are Grothendieck or module categories, extending the understanding of derived categories of schemes and rings.

Findings

Hearts of certain t-structures are Grothendieck categories.

Hearts can be equivalent to categories of quasi-coherent sheaves on subschemes.

Characterization of when hearts are module categories in geometric contexts.

Abstract

Let $R$ be a commutative Noetherian ring and let $\mathcal D(R)$ be its (unbounded) derived category. We show that all compactly generated t-structures in $\mathcal D(R)$ associated to a left bounded filtration by supports of Spec$(R)$ have a heart which is a Grothendieck category. Moreover, we identify all compactly generated t-structures in $\mathcal D(R)$ whose heart is a module category. As geometric consequences for a compactly generated t-structure $(\mathcal{U},\mathcal{U}^\perp [1])$ in the derived category $\mathcal{D}(\mathbb{X})$ of a Noetherian scheme $\mathbb{X}$, we get the following: 1) If the sequence $(\mathcal{U}[-n]\cap\mathcal{D}^{\leq 0}(\mathbb{X}))_{n\in\mathbb{N}}$ is stationnary, then the heart $\mathcal{H}$ is a Grothendieck category; 2) If $\mathcal{H}$ is a module category, then $\mathcal{H}$ is always equivalent to $\text{Qcoh}(\mathbb{Y})$, for some affine subscheme $\mathbb{Y}\subseteq\mathbb{X}$; 3) If $\mathbb{X}$ is connected, then: a) when $\bigcap_{k\in\mathbb{Z}}\mathcal{U}[k]=0$, the heart $\mathcal{H}$ is a module category if, and only if, the given t-structure is a translation of the canonical t-estructure in $\mathcal{D}(\mathbb{X})$; b) when $\mathbb{X}$ is irreducible, the heart $\mathcal{H}$ is a module category if, and only if, there are an affine subscheme $\mathbb{Y}\subseteq\mathbb{X}$ and an integer $m$ such that $\mathcal{U}$ consists of the complexes $U\in\mathcal{D}(\mathbb{X})$ such that the support of $H^j(U)$ is in $\mathbb{X}\setminus\mathbb{Y}$, for all $j>m$.