Exceptional sequences of invertible sheaves on rational surfaces

In this article we consider exceptional sequences of invertible sheaves on smooth complete rational surfaces. We show that to every such sequence one can associate a smooth complete toric surface in a canonical way. We use this structural result to prove various theorems on exceptional and strongly exceptional sequences of invertible sheaves on rational surfaces. We construct full strongly exceptional sequences for a large class of rational surfaces. For the case of toric surfaces we give a complete classification of full strongly exceptional sequences of invertible sheaves.