Mutation and the Gabriel spectrum

Abstract

Mutations occur in multiple algebraic contexts, often enjoying good combinatorial properties. In this paper we study mutations of pure-injective cosilting objects in compactly generated triangulated categories from a topological point of view. We consider the topologies studied by Gabriel, Burke and Prest on the set of indecomposable injective objects in a Grothendieck abelian category, transfer them to associated cosilting subcategories, and show that, in that context, right mutation induces a homeomorphism on two complementary subspaces. We then improve this result in the context of the derived category of a commutative noetherian ring, showing that right mutation is an open bijection. We end the paper with a detailed analysis of a range of cosilting subcategories over commutative noetherian rings for which the topology is completely known. As a byproduct of this analysis, we obtain that the category of modules over a commutative noetherian ring is the unique locally noetherian Grothendieck category in its derived-equivalence class.