Generators and Dimensions of Derived Categories of Modules

Abstract

Several years ago, Bondal, Rouquier, and Van den Bergh introduced the notion of the dimension of a triangulated category, and Rouquier proved that the bounded derived category of coherent sheaves on a separated scheme of finite type over a perfect field has finite dimension. In this article, we study the dimension of the bounded derived category of finitely generated modules over a commutative Noetherian ring. The main result of this article asserts that it is finite over a complete local ring containing a field with perfect residue field. Our methods also give a ring-theoretic proof of the affine case of Rouquier's theorem.