Derived categories of Fano threefolds and degenerations

Using the technique of categorical absorption of singularities we prove that the nontrivial components of the derived categories of del Pezzo threefolds of degree $d \in \{2,3,4,5\}$ and crepant categorical resolutions of the nontrivial components of the derived categories of nodal del Pezzo threefolds of degree $d = 1$ can be smoothly deformed to the nontrivial components of the derived categories of prime Fano threefolds of genus $g = 2d + 2 \in \{4,6,8,10,12\}$. This corrects and proves the Fano threefolds conjecture of the first author from (Kuznetsov in Tr. Mat. Inst. Steklova 264:116–128, 2009), and opens a way to interesting geometric applications, including a relation between the intermediate Jacobians and Hilbert schemes of curves of the above threefolds. We also describe a compactification of the moduli stack of prime Fano threefolds endowed with an appropriate exceptional bundle and its boundary component that corresponds to degenerations associated with del Pezzo threefolds.