Canonical bundle of a regular projective complete intersection Created 2026-10-07 Updated 2026-10-14
For regular homogeneous equations of degrees in , the normal bundle of a regular zero locus is . The Euler sequence gives , hence . Equations with unreduced multiplicities do not have this conclusion for the underlying reduced submanifold.
Canonical bundle of projective space Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-06
Over any field, the canonical bundle of projective space is . Indeed, dualizing the Euler sequence gives ; taking determinants gives the result. Hence Serre duality identifies with the dual of .
Cotangent-sheaf cohomology of projective space Created 2026-10-07 Updated 2026-10-14
For , the cotangent form of the Euler sequence is . The cohomology of twisting sheaves on projective space and the long exact sequence in sheaf cohomology give , with every other cohomology group zero. Therefore the Euler characteristic of a coherent sheaf is . The nonzero class is the connecting image of the constant section .
Use homogeneous coordinates . Multiplication by these degree-one sections defines the sheaf morphism
On , write , with , and let be the standard vector in component using the local line bundle frame of . Then , so is surjective since . Its kernel is a locally free sheaf with basis
Indeed any vector in the kernel is uniquely a sum of these vectors, by solving for its -th component.
The Kähler differential sheaf has basis on , since this chart is a polynomial affine scheme. Define the local map . To check that these isomorphisms glue, on put and . Then
The twisting sheaf on projective space frame changes by , hence
For , use , and ; the same formula applies. Thus the differential and kernel frames have identical transition matrices. We obtain the cotangent form of the Euler sequence:
This construction works over any field, including positive characteristic.
The Kähler differential sheaf has rank . Taking determinant line bundles in this locally split short exact sequence of sheaves gives
The left side is the tensor product of copies of , and . Consequently
It is the canonical bundle of projective space. The determinant identity can also be seen directly by taking the wedge of the kernel basis followed by a lift of the quotient basis; changing that lift by a kernel vector leaves the wedge unchanged.
On the standard affine charts , use the formal frame and glue rank-one free sheaves by
The transition functions are regular units on overlaps and satisfy the cocycle identity. This constructs the twisting sheaf on projective space as an invertible sheaf for every integer , including negative .
On a nonempty , a section has local expressions , where . Pulling to the punctured affine cone gives . Their agreement on overlaps makes them one homogeneous rational function of degree , regular on . To make its polynomial representation explicit, write one nonzero local coefficient as in the affine coordinates. Homogenize to degrees ; the resulting rational expression is
If the exponent of is negative, move its power to the denominator. Cancel common factors; the greatest common divisor of homogeneous polynomials can be chosen homogeneous. Thus with coprime homogeneous polynomials, , and .
Conversely, for such a homogeneous rational function regular on , its coefficient is regular on : restrict to the slice . These coefficients obey the displayed transition rule and hence define a section. This proves the homogeneous rational sections of a twisting sheaf description in both directions, for arbitrary open rather than only a standard chart.
Now lift a regular degree-zero rational function to the punctured cone. The quotient rule gives
This is a rational function homogeneous of degree . It is independent of the chosen representation because differentiation is a derivation of the rational function field. It is regular wherever is regular: a derivation of a polynomial ring extends to each localization by the quotient rule, and regular functions are locally such fractions. The preceding homogeneous-section description therefore proves
Zeros of a particular displayed denominator do not invalidate this argument; regularity is a property of the rational function, which can have another local representation.
The map is a -linear sheaf derivation with values in . The universal property of Kähler differentials consequently defines
Multiplication by the coordinate section defines the other map
For a degree- homogeneous polynomial, differentiating each monomial gives . Applying this to the equal-degree numerator and denominator gives for degree-zero , so . This identity is valid in every characteristic.
To prove all the exactness assertions, fix and put for . The Kähler differential sheaf is free there on , because a derivation of the polynomial ring is determined freely by its values on the coordinates. Trivialize each with frame . In this frame,
where now denotes the th coordinate vector of the direct sum. The map is surjective, since its th coefficient is one. Its kernel consists exactly of tuples with , so the displayed vectors form a free basis of that kernel. The map sends the differential basis bijectively to this kernel basis and is therefore injective. Exactness on these charts proves the cotangent Euler sequence in homogeneous coordinates
The proof uses no division by an integer and hence no characteristic-zero assumption.
For , the cohomology of twisting sheaves on projective space gives
In particular, , , and for every . The long exact sequence in sheaf cohomology of the displayed Euler sequence begins
and gives zero in the remaining degrees. Thus
The nonzero group is generated by the connecting image of the section of . If is admitted, is a point and its cotangent sheaf is zero, so the sole requested group is zero.
Use the quotient convention for projective space. To a scheme , associate the set of pairs
where is a line bundle, modulo isomorphisms carrying to . Pullback defines the contravariant functor. On , this means rank-one projective module quotients of ; the quotient need not be free. Thus merely listing generating tuples modulo multiplication by a unit would omit points over rings with nontrivial Picard group.
This functor is represented by . For each , the locus where generates is open. These loci cover , since a surjection onto a rank-one free stalk must have some coefficient a unit in its local ring. On this locus, trivialize by and write
These functions specify a map to the standard chart . Their transition rules are exactly those of projective space, so the chart maps glue. Conversely the universal quotient on projective space pulls back to the given pair, and the construction is natural and unique. This proves that projective space represents invertible quotients.
Write its universal exact sequence as
A first-order change of the quotient, with target trivialized locally, is a map . Changing the target trivialization by changes by . Restriction to removes this ambiguity, and every local map extends because the displayed sequence splits locally. Consequently the tangent sheaf of a scheme is
This identification can also be seen on : the first-order change of is after setting . Thus these maps are precisely the coordinate tangent directions.
Apply to the universal sequence. Since its terms are locally free and it splits locally, this gives the Euler sequence
It remains exact after any base change. Taking its dual of a sheaf over a field gives
For , the first term has rank one; taking determinants yields
Explicitly, for on the overlap of the two affine charts, , the same transition as after changing one local frame's sign.
The holomorphic normal bundle is the quotient , of rank . The tangent sequence is a short exact sequence of holomorphic vector bundles:
Taking determinant line bundles gives . Dualizing and rearranging proves adjunction for a smooth submanifold:
The determinant identity follows locally by adjoining lifts of a quotient frame to a subbundle frame; changing the lifts adds only off-diagonal blocks, so does not change the determinant.
For a smooth divisor, choose reduced local defining functions , with and holomorphic and nowhere zero. The holomorphic line bundle associated to a divisor has local frames , with . The products define its canonical section vanishing on . Along ,
Thus patches to a map , whose kernel is and which is surjective because each reduced defining function has nonzero differential there. Hence . This is the normal bundle of a smooth analytic hypersurface. The divisor construction uses a closed hypersurface: an arbitrary nonclosed embedded hypersurface need not be a divisor. For example, a punctured line in cannot be the support of a divisor, since its missing limit point would also lie in every local holomorphic zero set containing that line.
Let be the section of defining . The intended hypothesis is that it is a regular zero locus: has rank on . In a local trivialization, differentiation of the component functions defines
This is intrinsic: differentiating a change-of-frame matrix introduces terms multiplied by , which vanish on . Its kernel is , so it induces an isomorphism of holomorphic normal bundles. Consequently
This is the normal bundle of a regular zero locus. Here .
Regularity is essential if “vanishing” is read only as equality of underlying sets. On , the section of vanishes set-theoretically on a smooth line . Its derivative vanishes on , and
Thus smoothness of the underlying zero set alone does not establish the claimed normal-bundle isomorphism. The preceding proof applies when the equations define the reduced smooth submanifold, equivalently are transverse to zero.
For Complex projective space, put . At a line , the tangent space is . Quotienting by its scalar maps into yields the Euler sequence
Its determinant gives . For a smooth complete intersection defined regularly by the homogeneous equations, apply the normal-bundle result to :
This is the canonical bundle of a regular projective complete intersection. The same regularity qualification is needed here: the squared-line example would otherwise predict for its canonical bundle, whereas the line has .
For the Sheaf of relative Kähler differentials on , the cotangent form of the Euler sequence is
The last arrow is onto because at least one homogeneous coordinate is invertible on each standard affine chart. Locally its kernel is the rank-three module generated by the differentials of the three affine coordinates, yielding the displayed Sheaf of relative Kähler differentials. The cohomology of twisting sheaves on projective space gives for every , while and its positive-degree groups vanish. The long exact sequence in sheaf cohomology therefore gives the cotangent-sheaf cohomology of projective space in this dimension:
The isomorphism for is the connecting map from the constant global sections of . The Euler characteristic of a coherent sheaf is the alternating sum of dimensions, explaining the minus sign.
For the curve, put . It is a unique factorization domain, so irreducibility of makes a prime ideal. Also does not divide : otherwise irreducibility of would make them associates, contrary to their distinct degrees. Thus the image of is a nonzero element of the integral domain . It follows that is a regular sequence. Its Koszul complex is an exact sequence, and graded sheafification gives
where is the closed immersion. The signs make the composite . The shifts come respectively from , , and .
Let be the ideal sheaf of a closed subscheme. Split this Koszul resolution into
For all integers , . Also . The two long exact sequences in sheaf cohomology, together with sheaf cohomology under a closed inclusion, consequently identify
By Serre duality, for . Counting degree- monomials in four variables gives . Thus the source has dimension , and the two target spaces have dimensions and . The rank-nullity theorem proves the requested bound:
In fact equality holds. Under the Serre duality pairings, the dual of this map is
If , primeness of and imply . But has degree one and has degree five, forcing , and then . The dual map is injective, so the original map is surjective and its kernel has dimension . Thus the lower bound is attained for every pair allowed in the question. No smoothness assumption is needed. The regular sequence cuts out a projective complete intersection of dimension one. Also , by the negative twists and the intermediate cohomology vanishing in the first short exact sequence, so the second gives . This is the genus of a complete-intersection space curve: the first cohomology has dimension , equal to its arithmetic genus.
The resolution principle for sheaf cohomology states that an exact sequence
with for every computes as the cohomology of . In particular one may use a flasque resolution.
An affine morphism is one for which the inverse image of every affine open subset of is affine. We use vanishing of quasi-coherent cohomology on an affine scheme: a quasi-coherent sheaf has zero higher sheaf cohomology on an affine variety. Take a flasque resolution . Each direct image sheaf is flasque, because restriction on is restriction on . On an affine open , the augmented complex of sections is
Its positive-degree cohomology vanishes by the affine theorem, and its degree-zero kernel is . Checking exactness on this affine basis shows that is a flasque resolution of . The global-section complexes are identical, proving cohomology under an affine morphism:
For projective space, put with its usual grading and . Construct the twisting sheaf on projective space by setting its sections on to be the degree- part , viewed as a module over . It is free of rank one with generator , even when is negative. On overlaps the generators differ by the unit , so these modules glue to a line bundle .
Assume first . These local modules all embed in the graded fraction field, and agreement on overlaps identifies global sections with . Since is a unique factorization domain and at least two distinct variables occur, a reduced fraction belonging to every has no nonconstant denominator. Thus the intersection is . Counting monomials by stars and bars gives
Here . The printed formula needs the convention that a counting binomial coefficient is zero when its upper integer is smaller than its nonnegative lower integer; the generalized polynomial convention for negative upper integers would give incorrect dimensions. For , every twist on the single point is trivial, so for every and its higher cohomology is zero. This case supplies the base of dimension induction; the displayed top-cohomology formula below is for .
The standard affine opens have affine finite intersections. The acyclic cover theorem and affine vanishing identify sheaf cohomology with a Čech cochain complex ending in degree . In particular for .
Let , with inclusion . Multiplication by gives the hyperplane exact sequence for twisting sheaves
Exactness is checked in the local trivializations, where a hyperplane equation is a non-zero-divisor and the quotient is its restriction to . Since a closed immersion is an affine morphism, the first part identifies the cohomology of with that on .
For , the long exact sequence in sheaf cohomology and give
Starting from the given vanishing for sufficiently large and descending gives for and for .
Now let , and assume the formulas in dimension . Restriction
is surjective for every : for it is polynomial restriction, and for both groups are zero since . The long exact sequence in sheaf cohomology therefore makes injective. For , dimension induction gives , so the same sequence makes
injective. Composing these injections up to a sufficiently large twist, where the target is zero by the given hypothesis, proves for every and .
The remaining part of the long exact sequence in sheaf cohomology is consequently
where the last zero uses the affine-cover dimension bound on . Hence . Using dimension induction and eventual vanishing, downward summation yields
by telescoping Pascal's identity; for it is zero. Thus, without invoking Serre duality in the induction,
Finally, the canonical bundle of projective space is , obtained by taking determinants in the dual Euler sequence. Serre duality therefore predicts
It pairs the two computed extreme-degree dimensions and pairs zero intermediate groups with zero intermediate groups, exactly as required.
The cohomology of twisting sheaves on projective space is
In particular, for , while and .
Apply the long exact sequence in cohomology to the displayed Euler sequence. Its degree-zero part is
and all later terms vanish. The first map sends to the tuple of homogeneous coordinates and is injective. Therefore
The Euler sequence on is
The Whitney product formula for the Total Chern class therefore gives
in .
With the quotient convention, projective space represents the functor of surjections from a rank- free sheaf to a line bundle, modulo isomorphisms of the target compatible with the map. On an affine base the target may be a nontrivial rank-one projective module, so a tuple of elements generating the unit ideal is only the description when that target is trivial. Where the image of the th basis vector generates the target, divide the other images by it to get the usual affine coordinates. Infinitesimal variations of the quotient form and give the Euler sequence.