On triangulated orbit categories

We show that the category of orbits of the bounded derived category of a hereditary category under a well-behaved autoequivalence is canonically triangulated. This answers a question by A. Buan, R. Marsh and I. Reiten which appeared in their study with M. Reineke and G. Todorov of the link between tilting theory and cluster algebras (closely related to work by Caldero-Chapoton-Schiffler) and a question by H. Asashiba about orbit categories. We observe that the resulting triangulated orbit categories provide many easy examples of triangulated categories with the Calabi-Yau property. These include the category of projective modules over a preprojective algebra of generalized Dynkin type in the sense of Happel-Preiser-Ringel, whose triangulated structure goes back to Auslander-Reiten's work on the representation-theoretic approach to rational singularities.