Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2015 iii Paper 20 1 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
The affine-target adjunction for schemes gives the natural bijectionA morphism of schemes gives the homomorphism on global sections induced by , using .
Conversely, let be a ring homomorphism. Choose an affine open subscheme cover of . Restriction of global sections gives homomorphisms , hence morphisms of schemes . On any affine open subscheme , both restrictions correspond to the same homomorphism . They therefore agree on . Such affine opens cover the overlap, so the glue uniquely to a morphism of schemes .
The two constructions are inverse: the first recovers on each , hence on all of , and the second recovers every restriction of a given . This proof needs neither affineness nor quasi-compactness of .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2015 iii Paper 20 1 c Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Let be the maximal ideal of the local ring . Every open subset of containing the closed point is the whole spectrum of a commutative ring: it contains a principal open subscheme with , and that is a unit, so .
Given , choose a standard affine open subscheme containing . Its preimage is consequently all of . The affine-target adjunction for schemes expresses in this chart by elements for , the images of . It is represented by homogeneous coordinates with and .
Conversely, a tuple with some defines a morphism of schemes into by . Choosing another unit entry gives the same morphism of schemes, since the usual projective space transition functions identify the ratios. Multiplying all entries by one unit does not change any ratio. If two such tuples define the same morphism of schemes, choose a unit entry in the first and a unit entry in the second. In the second chart, the function pulls back to . Because the whole map lies in , this ratio is a unit, so is a unit too. Equality in this chart gives for every , hence .
Thus the correspondence is exactlyThis is the projective coordinates over a local ring description.
For a general ring, the key open-neighbourhood argument fails. Even a tuple generating the unit ideal need not have any unit entry. For example, over the pair defines a map to whose two points have images and . Neither coordinate is a unit, and no common unit multiple changes that fact. The map lies in no single standard chart. More generally, maps into projective space correspond to invertible sheaf quotients of ; the quotient need not be a free rank-one module outside the local ring case.