Covering classes and $1$-tilting cotorsion pairs over commutative rings

Abstract: We are interested in characterising the commutative rings for which a $1$-tilting cotorsion pair $(\mathcal{A}, \mathcal{T})$ provides for covers, that is when the class $\mathcal{A}$ is a covering class. We use Hrbek's bijective correspondence between the $1$-tilting cotorsion pairs over a commutative ring $R$ and the faithful finitely generated Gabriel topologies on $R$. Moreover, we use results of Bazzoni-Positselski, in particular a generalisation of Matlis equivalence and their characterisation of covering classes for $1$-tilting cotorsion pairs arising from flat injective ring epimorphisms. Explicitly, if $\mathcal{G}$ is the Gabriel topology associated to the $1$-tilting cotorsion pair $(\mathcal{A}, \mathcal{T})$, and $R_\mathcal{G}$ is the ring of quotients with respect to $\mathcal{G}$, we show that if $\mathcal{A}$ is covering then $\mathcal{G}$ is a perfect localisation (in Stenstr\"om's sense) and the localisation $R_\mathcal{G}$ has projective dimension at most one. Moreover, we show that $\mathcal{A}$ is covering if and only if both the localisation $R_\mathcal{G}$ and the quotient rings $R/J$ are perfect rings for every $J \in \mathcal{G}$. Rings satisfying the latter two conditions are called $\mathcal{G}$-almost perfect.