A Bridgeland stability condition on a triangulated category consists of a central charge homomorphism from its Grothendieck group
to
and a locally finite slicing
indexed by real phases. A nonzero object
has
with
. The slicing satisfies
, and morphisms from higher to lower phases
vanish. Every nonzero object has a finite Harder-Narasimhan
filtration by distinguished triangles. Local finiteness requires the extension
categories of sufficiently short phase intervals to be quasi-abelian of finite
length.
For a smooth projective variety, a numerical condition factors through the numerical Grothendieck
group
,
the quotient by the radical of the Euler pairing. The full numerical support property
requires a norm and a constant
such that
for every nonzero semistable object. This controls its entire numerical class, including directions invisible to selected intersection degrees. The heart is the extension
category .
A geometric condition has every point sheaf stable of phase
1.