Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2007 iii Paper 89 4 iii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
The overlap of the two charts is obtained by inverting . Since , this also inverts ; then and . Thus its coordinate ring is . The other chart has coordinate . A global section is therefore an element in the intersectioninside : a Laurent polynomial with both only nonnegative and only nonpositive exponents is constant.
Let . Reducing the presentation of givesAs a vector space and as a ring extension, this iswhere and is annihilated by . In particular : the free basis of in part ii remains a basis after tensoring with . Although mapped to before reduction, reducing the subring is not the same operation as taking its image inside ; that distinction is exactly where the extra section arises.
On the overlap, is invertible and , so restricts to zero. Therefore the section on the first chart glues to zero on the second chart and defines a nonzero global nilpotent section on . More precisely the reduced first-chart ring is , andin . The only extra compatible sections are multiples of . HenceThe map printed in the question reduces modulo and includes its image as constants. Its kernel is and its cokernel is . More strongly, even the usual base-change map after tensoring,is not surjective. This is global-section base-change failure in a flat projective family, despite the properness and flatness proved above.