Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2016/iii/paper-113/1/ii/solution

Put . The punctured affine plane is covered by the principal open subschemes and . Since is an integral domain, restriction identifies its global sections with
This intersection is : if , then , and unique factorization forces to divide . Therefore the inclusion induces the identity on global regular functions.
If were an affine scheme, affine scheme reconstruction from global sections would make an isomorphism of schemes, because its global-section map is an isomorphism. But its image omits the closed point . The punctured affine plane is therefore not affine. This is a useful example of global regular functions failing to distinguish a nonaffine open subscheme from its affine ambient space.

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