Annihilation of cohomology and strong generation of module categories

The cohomology annihilator of a noetherian ring that is finitely generated as a module over its center is introduced. Results are established linking the existence of non-trivial cohomology annihilators and the existence of strong generators for the category of finitely generated modules. Exploiting this link, results of Popescu and Roczen, and Wang concerning cohomology annihilators of commutative rings, and also results of Aihara and Takahashi, Keller and Van den Bergh, and Rouquier on strong finite generation of the corresponding bounded derived category, are generalized to cover excellent local rings and also rings essentially of finite type over a field.