We study the derived categories of coherent sheaves on Gushel–Mukai varieties. In the derived category of such a variety, we isolate a special semiorthogonal component, which is a K3 or Enriques category according to whether the dimension of the variety is even or odd. We analyze the basic properties of this category using Hochschild homology, Hochschild cohomology, and the Grothendieck group. We study the K3 category of a Gushel–Mukai fourfold in more detail. Namely, we show this category is equivalent to the derived category of a K3 surface for a certain codimension 1 family of rational Gushel–Mukai fourfolds, and to the K3 category of a birational cubic fourfold for a certain codimension 3 family. The first of these results verifies a special case of a duality conjecture which we formulate. We discuss our results in the context of the rationality problem for Gushel–Mukai varieties, which was one of the main motivations for this work.

We show that a standard conic bundle over a minimal rational surface is rational and its Jacobian splits as the direct sum of Jacobians of curves if and only if its derived category admits a semiorthogonal decomposition by exceptional objects and the derived categories of those curves. Moreover, such a decomposition gives the splitting of the intermediate Jacobian also when the surface is not minimal.

Let X be an algebraic variety over a base scheme S and ϕ:T→S a base change. Given an admissible subcategory 𝒜 in 𝒟b(X), the bounded derived category of coherent sheaves on X, we construct under some technical conditions an admissible subcategory 𝒜T in 𝒟b(X×ST), called the base change of 𝒜, in such a way that the following base change theorem holds: if a semiorthogonal decomposition of 𝒟b (X)is given, then the base changes of its components form a semiorthogonal decomposition of 𝒟b (X×ST) . As an intermediate step, we construct a compatible system of semiorthogonal decompositions of the unbounded derived category of quasicoherent sheaves on X and of the category of perfect complexes on X. As an application, we prove that the projection functors of a semiorthogonal decomposition are kernel functors.