Use algebraic Chern classes in the Chow ring of a nonsingular algebraic variety . For a vector bundle of rank , the classes are invariant under bundle isomorphism, have , vanish for , and commute with pullback. Their Total Chern class is . The Whitney sum formula for Chern classes applies to every short exact sequence :
Normalization for a line bundle is , where is the divisor class. In particular, , , and the trivial bundle has total class one. These properties determine the classes: pull back to the iterated projective bundle where has a filtration by line bundles. The projective bundle formula for Chow groups makes this pullback injective, and Whitney multiplication expresses as the elementary symmetric polynomial of the first classes of the line factors. This also gives .
Let be the smooth degree- projective hypersurface and set . The algebraic cotangent bundle has rank . Restriction of the cotangent Euler sequence in homogeneous coordinates remains exact, because its terms and quotient are locally free. Thus
and Whitney multiplication gives
The defining equation has degree , so the conormal sheaf is . Smoothness makes its differential map injective with locally free quotient, giving the Conormal exact sequence for Kähler differentials
A second application of the Whitney sum formula for Chern classes yields
The inverse is the finite geometric series in the graded Chow ring: terms in codimension greater than vanish. Expanding gives every requested class,
For example,
when the corresponding ranks and codimensions exist. The first expression agrees with the canonical bundle of a smooth projective hypersurface . For a plane curve, , matching Q4. For a quartic surface in , and , whose degree is . These checks also confirm the sign in the cotangent, rather than tangent, formula.