We study cluster categories arising from marked surfaces (with punctures and nonempty boundaries). By constructing skewed-gentle algebras, we show that there is a bijection between tagged curves and string objects. Applications include interpreting dimensions of Ext1 as intersection numbers of tagged curves and Auslander-Reiten translation as tagged rotation. An important consequence is that the cluster(-tilting) exchange graphs of such cluster categories are connected.

We study endomorphism algebras of 2-term silting complexes in derived categories of hereditary finite dimensional algebras, or more generally of Ext-finite hereditary abelian categories. Module categories of such endomorphism algebras are known to occur as hearts of certain bounded t-structures in such derived categories. We show that the algebras occurring are exactly the algebras of small homological dimension, which are algebras characterized by the property that each indecomposable module either has injective dimension at most one, or it has projective dimension at most one.

We study the oriented exchange graph EG(Gamma_N Q) ofreachable hearts in the finite-dimensional derived category D(Gamma_N Q) of the CY-N Ginzburg algebra Gamma_N Q associated to an acyclic quiver Q. We show that any such heart is induced from some heart in the bounded derived category D(Q) via some ‘Lagrangian immersion’ L :D(Q)->D(Gamma_N Q). We build on this to show that the quotient of EG(Gamma_N Q) by the Seidel–Thomas braid group is the exchange graph CEG_N−1(Q)of cluster tilting sets in the (higher) cluster category C_N−1(Q). As an application, we interpret Buan–Thomas’ coloured quiver for a cluster tilting set in terms of the Ext quiver of any corresponding heart in D(Gamma_N Q).

We study the fundamental groups of the exchange graphs for the bounded derived category D(Q) of a Dynkin quiver Q and the finite-dimensional derived category D(Gamma_N Q)of the Calabi–Yau-N Ginzburg algebra associated to Q. In the case of D(Q), we prove that its space of stability conditions (in the sense of Bridgeland) is simply connected. As an application, we show that the Donaldson–Thomas type invariant associated to Q can be calculated as a quantum dilogarithm function on its exchange graph. In the case of D(Gamma_N Q), we show that the faithfulness of the Seidel–Thomas braid group action (which is known for Q of type A or N=2) implies the simply connectedness of the space of stability conditions.

We are interested in the 3-Calabi-Yau categories D arising from quivers with potential associated to a triangulated marked surface S (without punctures). We prove that the spherical twist group ST of D is isomorphic to a subgroup (generated by braid twists) of the mapping class group of the decorated marked surface S_Delta. Here S_Delta is the surface obtained from S by decorating with a set of points, where the number of points equals the number of triangles in any triangulations of S. For instance, when S is an annulus, the result implies that the corresponding spaces of stability conditions on D are contractible.