In
mathematics
Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...
, a triangulated category is a
category
Category, plural categories, may refer to:
General uses
*Classification, the general act of allocating things to classes/categories Philosophy
* Category of being
* ''Categories'' (Aristotle)
* Category (Kant)
* Categories (Peirce)
* Category ( ...
with the additional structure of a "translation functor" and a class of "exact triangles". Prominent examples are the
derived category
In mathematics, the derived category ''D''(''A'') of an abelian category ''A'' is a construction of homological algebra introduced to refine and in a certain sense to simplify the theory of derived functors defined on ''A''. The construction pr ...
of an
abelian category
In mathematics, an abelian category is a category in which morphisms and objects can be added and in which kernels and cokernels exist and have desirable properties.
The motivating prototypical example of an abelian category is the category o ...
, as well as the
stable homotopy category
A stable is a building in which working animals are kept, especially horses or oxen. The building is usually divided into stalls, and may include storage for equipment and feed.
Styles
There are many different types of stables in use toda ...
. The exact triangles generalize the
short exact sequence
In mathematics, an exact sequence is a sequence of morphisms between objects (for example, Group (mathematics), groups, Ring (mathematics), rings, Module (mathematics), modules, and, more generally, objects of an abelian category) such that the Im ...
s in an abelian category, as well as
fiber sequences and
cofiber sequences in topology.
Much of
homological algebra
Homological algebra is the branch of mathematics that studies homology (mathematics), homology in a general algebraic setting. It is a relatively young discipline, whose origins can be traced to investigations in combinatorial topology (a precurs ...
is clarified and extended by the language of triangulated categories, an important example being the theory of
sheaf cohomology
In mathematics, sheaf cohomology is the application of homological algebra to analyze the global sections of a sheaf on a topological space. Broadly speaking, sheaf cohomology describes the obstructions (holes) to solving a geometric problem glob ...
. In the 1960s, a typical use of triangulated categories was to extend properties of sheaves on a space ''X'' to complexes of sheaves, viewed as objects of the derived category of sheaves on ''X''. More recently, triangulated categories have become objects of interest in their own right. Many equivalences between triangulated categories of different origins have been proved or conjectured. For example, the
homological mirror symmetry
Homological mirror symmetry is a mathematical conjecture made by Maxim Kontsevich. It seeks a systematic mathematical explanation for a phenomenon called mirror symmetry first observed by physicists studying string theory.
History
In an addre ...
conjecture predicts that the derived category of a
Calabi–Yau manifold
In algebraic and differential geometry, a Calabi–Yau manifold, also known as a Calabi–Yau space, is a particular type of manifold which has certain properties, such as Ricci flatness, yielding applications in theoretical physics. P ...
is equivalent to the
Fukaya category of its "mirror"
symplectic manifold
In differential geometry, a subject of mathematics, a symplectic manifold is a smooth manifold, M , equipped with a closed nondegenerate differential 2-form \omega , called the symplectic form. The study of symplectic manifolds is called sy ...
.
Shift operator is a decategorified analogue of triangulated category.
History
Triangulated categories were introduced independently by Dieter Puppe (1962) and
Jean-Louis Verdier
Jean-Louis Verdier (; 2 February 1935 – 25 August 1989) was a French mathematician who worked, under the guidance of his doctoral advisor Alexander Grothendieck, on derived categories and Verdier duality. He was a close collaborator of Groth ...
(1963), although Puppe's axioms were less complete (lacking the octahedral axiom (TR 4)). Puppe was motivated by the stable homotopy category. Verdier's key example was the derived category of an abelian category, which he also defined, developing ideas of
Alexander Grothendieck
Alexander Grothendieck, later Alexandre Grothendieck in French (; ; ; 28 March 1928 – 13 November 2014), was a German-born French mathematician who became the leading figure in the creation of modern algebraic geometry. His research ext ...
. The early applications of derived categories included
coherent duality
In mathematics, coherent duality is any of a number of generalisations of Serre duality, applying to coherent sheaves, in algebraic geometry and complex manifold theory, as well as some aspects of commutative algebra that are part of the 'local' th ...
and
Verdier duality
In mathematics, Verdier duality is a cohomological duality in algebraic topology that generalizes Poincaré duality for manifolds. Verdier duality was introduced in 1965 by as an analog for locally compact topological spaces of
Alexander Groth ...
, which extends
Poincaré duality
In mathematics, the Poincaré duality theorem, named after Henri Poincaré, is a basic result on the structure of the homology (mathematics), homology and cohomology group (mathematics), groups of manifolds. It states that if ''M'' is an ''n''-dim ...
to singular spaces.
Definition
A shift or translation functor on a category ''D'' is an additive automorphism (or for some authors, an auto-
equivalence)
from ''D'' to ''D''. It is common to write
for integers ''n''.
A triangle (''X'', ''Y'', ''Z'', ''u'', ''v'', ''w'') consists of three objects ''X'', ''Y'', and ''Z'', together with morphisms
,
and