Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2010 iii Paper 16 4 ii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
The affine space is an integral scheme, hence its underlying topological space is irreducible. Every nonempty open subset of an irreducible topological space is irreducible and in particular connected. A section of the constant sheaf with value the function field is a locally constant function, so on any such open subset it is constant. Thus its sections are on each nonempty open subset and zero on the empty set. All restriction maps are either identities on or maps onto zero.
The constant sheaf is therefore a flasque sheaf. It has its natural -module structure because a regular function on a nonempty open subset embeds in the function field and acts by multiplication. Part (i) now givesThis is an instance of constant sheaves on irreducible spaces are flasque; no restriction on is needed.