Explicit homotopy limits of dg-categories and twisted complexes

Abstract

In this paper we study the homotopy limits of cosimplicial diagrams of dg-categories. We first give an explicit construction of the totalization of such a diagram and then show that the totalization agrees with the homotopy limit in the following two cases: (1) the complexes of sheaves of O-modules on the Čech nerve of an open cover of a ringed space (X,O); (2) the complexes of sheaves on the simplicial nerve of a discrete group G acting on a space. The explicit models we obtain in this way are twisted complexes as well as their D-module and G-equivariant versions. As an application we show that there is a stack of twisted perfect complexes.