Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2014/iii/paper-13/1/solution

For a presheaf , first form its stalks . Define to consist of families , with , which are locally represented by sections of : every has a neighbourhood and with for all . Addition is pointwise and restriction discards the components outside the smaller open set. The local representability condition is itself local, so compatible such families on an open cover glue uniquely. Thus is a sheaf of abelian groups. This is sheafification by locally representable germs.
The canonical presheaf morphism is
The universal property of sheafification says that, for any sheaf , composition with gives a natural bijection
Indeed, locally representing a family by defines its image locally by the image of in . Equal germs give locally equal images, and the sheaf gluing axiom gives the unique global image. If is already a sheaf, a section with all germs zero is zero, while every locally represented family glues to an actual section. Hence is both injective and surjective for every , so sheafification leaves a sheaf unchanged.
For a continuous map , the direct image sheaf is
An open cover pulls back to an open cover, so its sheaf axioms follow directly from those of . To construct the inverse image sheaf, first set
Restriction uses the inclusion of these neighbourhood systems when shrinks. The use of sheafification is important: need not itself be a sheaf. Continuity and the stalk construction give .
Given an f-morphism of sheaves , define its map on stalks by
If two representatives have the same germ at , they agree on a neighbourhood there. Restriction compatibility makes their images agree on its inverse image, a neighbourhood of , proving well-definedness. The map is a group homomorphism. We index it by , since different points over the same have different target stalks.
For , its class in and then in its sheafification defines the canonical f-morphism of sheaves . Its germ at is simply . To factor any , take a section . Locally on an open cover , it comes from a section with . Define the prospective image on by
On an overlap, the representatives have the same inverse-image germs, so their images have the same germs by the maps . Two sheaf sections with equal germs everywhere are equal. The local images therefore glue uniquely, independently of every representative and cover choice. This construction is additive and commutes with restrictions, giving a sheaf morphism with
Conversely any factorization must have the prescribed image on these locally generating sections, proving uniqueness. This is the universal property of an inverse image sheaf.
An f-morphism of sheaves is exactly a sheaf morphism . Thus the two constructions give the inverse-image direct-image adjunction
Naturality follows from composing the local representatives and their images with morphisms in either sheaf variable. This is an adjunction for sheaves of abelian groups; it is not the tensor-adjusted pullback of modules on a ringed space.

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