Exceptional complete intersection maps of local rings

This work concerns surjective maps $\varphi\colon R\to S$ of commutative noetherian local rings with kernel generated by a regular sequence that is part of a minimal generating set for the maximal ideal of $R$. The main result provides criteria for detecting such exceptional complete intersection maps in terms of the lattices of thick subcategories of the derived category of complexes of finite length homology. A key input is a characterization of such maps in terms of the truncated Atiyah class of $\varphi$.