Field-valued points do not detect nilpotents

ID: field-valued-points-do-not-detect-nilpotents

Let be a commutative ring and an ideal all of whose elements are nilpotent elements. Every ring homomorphism from to a field kills , because a field has no nonzero nilpotent elements. Thus the closed immersion induces a bijection on points valued in every field, even when it is not an isomorphism of schemes. The dual numbers provide the smallest example. Testing the functor of points on all affine schemes does detect this information, by affine test schemes determine scheme morphisms.

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