Consequences of the existence of Auslander-Reiten triangles with applications to perfect complexes for self-injective algebras

In a k-linear triangulated category (where k is a field) we show that the existence of Auslander-Reiten triangles implies that objects are determined, up to shift, by knowing dimensions of homomorphisms between them. In most cases the objects themselves are distinguished by this information, a conclusion which was also reached under slightly different hypotheses in a theorem of Jensen, Su and Zimmermann. The approach is to consider bilinear forms on Grothendieck groups which are analogous to the Green ring of a finite group. We specialize to the category of perfect complexes for a self-injective algebra, for which the Auslander-Reiten quiver has a known shape. We characterize the position in the quiver of many kinds of perfect complexes, including those of lengths 1, 2 and 3, rigid complexes and truncated projective resolutions. We describe completely the quiver components which contain projective modules. We obtain relationships between the homology of complexes at different places in the quiver, deducing that every self-injective algebra of radical length at least 3 has indecomposable perfect complexes with arbitrarily large homology in any given degree. We find also that homology stabilizes away from the rim of the quiver. We show that when the algebra is symmetric, one of the forms considered earlier is Hermitian, and this allows us to compute its values knowing them only on objects on the rim of the quiver.