Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2024 iii Paper 113 1 a Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
For the requested example, take the affine plane with doubled origin: glue two copies by the identity onThe opens and are affine, while their intersection is the punctured affine plane, which is not affine. Indeed, its regular functions are still ; if it were affine, the canonical map to would be an isomorphism, contrary to the missing origin. The resulting scheme is not separated: in a separated scheme, the intersection of two affine opens is the inverse image of the closed diagonal inside their affine product and is therefore affine.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2026 iii Paper 113 3 c Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
For the cover of the affine plane with doubled origin, the overlap is the punctured affine plane . Since , the Čech complex beginsThis map is surjective, and the normalized complex has no terms in degrees at least two. Consequently
The Mayer-Vietoris sequence for sheaf cohomology also gives , but its next part givesPart b with shows that the group on the right is infinite-dimensional. Thus
This does not contradict the acyclic cover theorem. Although and are affine, their intersection is not acyclic: it has nonzero first structure-sheaf cohomology. Equivalently, this affine cover does not satisfy the theorem's hypotheses; the doubled-origin plane is not a semi-separated scheme.