If a nonnegatively graded ring is generated by as an -algebra, the standard affine opens of Proj with cover . Indeed a homogeneous prime containing every degree-one element would contain the irrelevant ideal of a graded ring. This condition makes all twisting sheaves on Proj invertible and makes graded sheafification compatible with tensor products of sheaves.
Irrelevant ideal of projective space Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
In the standard graded homogeneous coordinate ring of , the irrelevant ideal is
It vanishes only at the origin of the corresponding affine cone, which does not represent a projective point.
For every homogeneous ,
Hence
so is open in the Zariski topology.
If , then is a homogeneous prime ideal that does not contain the irrelevant ideal of a graded ring . Thus
defines a map . On every standard affine open of Proj the graded homomorphism induces
and therefore an affine scheme morphism
These morphisms agree after localization on overlaps, so they glue to the required morphism of schemes .