The existence of homotopy resolutions of \(N\)-complexes (Q5963053)

In the recent article [\textit{X.Y. Yang}, and \textit{N.Q. Ding}, J. Algebra 426, 430--476 (2015; Zbl 1305.18064)], the authors introduced the homotopy and derived categories of \(N\)-complexes of an abelian category for any integer \(N \geq 2\), and proved that they are pretriangulated in the sense of [\textit{A. Beligiannis}, and \textit{I. Reiten}, Mem. Am. Math. Soc. 883, 207 p. (2007; Zbl 1124.18005)]. We remark that the derived category of \(N\)-complexes is defined as the localization of the corresponding homotopy category by the class of quasi-isomorphisms, which were also introduced in the mentioned article. Moreover, by following the standard philosophy of homotopical algebra the authors define the notion of dg-projective and dg-injective \(N\)-complex. All of their constructions specialize to the usual ones if \(N = 2\). As a comment, it is somehow frustrating that the term ``pretriangulated'' is used with two very different meanings in the literature: the previously referred one, and the one that this reviewer has most often encountered, meaning that all the axioms of a triangulated category hold with possible exception of the octahedral axiom (see [\textit{A. Neeman}, Triangulated categories. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (2001; Zbl 0974.18008)]). The main result of this article states that, if the abelian category is Grothendieck and has enough projectives then every \(N\)-complex is quasi-isomorphic to a dg-projective (resp., dg-injective) \(N\)-complex (see Theorems 3.8 and 3.11). The authors then apply the previous results to prove that the derived category of \(N\)-complexes of left \(R\)-modules is compactly generated (see Theorem 4.5). They also show that the homotopy category of of \(N\)-complexes of injective left \(R\)-modules is compactly generated if \(R\) is left noetherian (see Theorem 4.8), and that the homotopy category of \(N\)-complexes of projective left \(R\)-modules is compactly generated if \(R\) is left coherent and every flat left \(R\)-module has finite projective dimension (see Theorem 5.6). Finally, they consider a recollement of pretriangulated categories (a notion introduced by the authors, which does specialize in principle to the usual notion for triangulated categories, for which an extra condition on distinguished triangles is also assumed) of the homotopy category of \(N\)-complexes of left \(R\)-modules relative to the exact homotopy category and the derived category (see Theorem 6.1).