A locally ringed space is a topological space equipped with a sheaf of commutative rings whose stalk at every point is a local ring. A morphism of locally ringed spaces consists of a continuous map and a morphism of sheaves of rings , with every induced stalk map a local homomorphism: the inverse image of the target maximal ideal is the source maximal ideal. Here is the direct image sheaf, with sections on .
Let be a ring homomorphism. Define the map between the spectra of rings by
The inverse image is a prime ideal, and . Thus is a continuous map, because the principal open subsets form a basis. On these principal open subsets, define the structure sheaf map using the localizations
These maps commute with restrictions and consequently give a morphism of sheaves. At , putting , the stalk map is . An element belongs to its inverse image of exactly when , so this is a local homomorphism. We have constructed a morphism of locally ringed spaces.
Conversely, take a morphism of locally ringed spaces . Its map on global sections gives a ring homomorphism
Locality of the stalk map implies, for every ,
Hence the point map must be . On , its structure sheaf map must send to and the inverse of to the inverse of . Thus it is precisely the localization map constructed above. Agreement on this basis proves agreement of the morphisms of sheaves. In particular, the inducing ring homomorphism exists and is unique.
If is surjective, write . The correspondence between prime ideals of and prime ideals of containing identifies homeomorphically with the closed subset : the principal open subsets correspond on both sides. Moreover, the stalk maps are the surjections , so is surjective.
For the converse, it is important not to assume that global sections preserve an arbitrary surjection of sheaves. Here the affine module-sheaf equivalence supplies the extra information: on every ,
Thus is the quasi-coherent sheaf associated with the -module , and the cokernel sheaf of is associated with the module , since localization of a module is exact. Surjectivity of the morphism of sheaves gives for every prime ideal . This implies : if , its proper annihilator lies in a maximal ideal , and then in . Therefore is surjective. We have proved the closed immersion criterion for affine schemes:
Use the local-presentation definition of a quasi-coherent sheaf: locally it admits a presentation by direct sums of copies of the structure sheaf, with no finiteness requirement on the index sets. If is an -module, choose a free module presentation . Exactness of localization of a module gives the corresponding local presentation of . Hence a sheaf which is associated with a module on every affine open subset is a quasi-coherent sheaf.
For the converse, begin with a quasi-coherent sheaf and a local presentation on an affine open subset . The free sheaves have global sections and : a section has locally finite support, and quasi-compactness of makes its support finite globally. Part (i) identifies the presentation map with an -module homomorphism. Exactness of localization then identifies its cokernel sheaf with for the module cokernel . Thus there is an affine open cover on which is associated with modules.
It remains to show this on an arbitrary affine open subset , rather than only the selected cover. Around each point of , choose an affine neighborhood contained in with such a local presentation. Choose a finite cover refining these neighborhoods. On each the restriction is associated with a module. Its restriction to is therefore the corresponding localization, and the same is true after intersecting with . Put . The sheaf gluing axiom gives
where the arrow is the difference of the two restriction maps. Localization of a module commutes with kernels and finite products. Localizing this formula at therefore gives exactly the gluing formula for , covered by the . Consequently
compatibly with restriction. These isomorphisms on the principal open subsets identify with . We have proved the global-section localization for quasi-coherent sheaves and, in particular,