Height of exceptional collections and Hochschild cohomology of quasiphantom categories

Abstract

Abstract We define the normal Hochschild cohomology of an admissible subcategory of the derived category of coherent sheaves on a smooth projective variety X, a graded vector space which controls the restriction morphism from the Hochschild cohomology of X to the Hochschild cohomology of the orthogonal complement of this admissible subcategory. When the subcategory is generated by an exceptional collection, we define a new invariant (the height) and show that the orthogonal to an exceptional collection of height h in the derived category of a smooth projective variety X has the same Hochschild cohomology as X in degrees up to h - 2. We use this to describe the second Hochschild cohomology of quasiphantom categories in the derived categories of some surfaces of general type. We also give necessary and sufficient conditions for the fullness of an exceptional collection in terms of its height and of its normal Hochschild cohomology.