Bounded t-structures, finitistic dimensions, and singularity categories of triangulated categories

Recently, Amnon Neeman settled a bold conjecture by Antieau, Gepner, and Heller regarding the relationship between the regularity of finite-dimensional noetherian schemes and the existence of bounded t-structures on their derived categories of perfect complexes. In this paper, we prove some very general results about the existence of bounded t-structures on (not necessarily algebraic or topological) triangulated categories and their invariance under completion. Our general treatment, when specialized to the case of schemes, immediately gives us Neeman's theorem as an application and significantly generalizes another remarkable theorem by Neeman about the equivalence of bounded t-structures on the bounded derived categories of coherent sheaves. When specialized to other cases like (not necessarily commutative) rings, nonpositive DG-rings, connective 𝔼_1-rings, triangulated categories without models, etc., we get many other applications. Under mild finiteness assumptions, these results give a categorical obstruction, the singularity category in our sense, to the existence of bounded t-structures on a triangulated category. The two key tools used in our treatment are the finitistic dimension for a triangulated category (a new concept introduced in the paper) and lifting t-structures along completions of triangulated categories.