Work on affine open subsets. Their coordinate rings are Noetherian rings and integrally closed domains. At a prime ideal of height of a prime ideal one, the local ring is a one-dimensional Noetherian local ring which is an integrally closed domain, hence a discrete valuation ring and therefore a regular local ring. At the generic point the local ring is a field, hence a regular local ring. For a brief justification of the one-dimensional local ring fact, take in a one-dimensional Noetherian local ring which is an integrally closed domain. Some ; choose the least such , and choose . Then , but . If , the determinant trick applied to the finitely generated faithful module would make integral over , a contradiction. Hence the ideal contains a unit and equals . Thus is principal. A one-dimensional Noetherian local ring with principal maximal ideal is a discrete valuation ring. Therefore a normal variety is regular in codimension one.
The ground field is an algebraically closed field, hence a perfect field, so having a regular local ring is equivalent to being a smooth point of a variety here. Moreover, the smooth locus of a variety is open, making the singular locus closed. If an irreducible component of the singular locus had algebraic codimension zero or one, its generic point would have a regular local ring by the preceding argument, a contradiction. Consequently every such component has algebraic codimension at least two.
One can read the numerical bound directly from chains of prime ideals, without identifying algebraic dimension with transcendence degree. For a prime ideal of height of a prime ideal at least two in an affine chart, append a chain below any chain in the quotient by . Its length increases by two. Thus . Since a nonempty affine open subset of the irreducible variety has algebraic dimension ,
For or , this means the singular locus is empty; take .
A standard sufficient hypothesis is that is both a Noetherian scheme and an integral scheme, and is regular in codimension one; in particular, a Noetherian normal scheme qualifies. A Weil divisor is then a finite sum
over integral codimension-one closed subschemes . The local ring at the generic point of each is a discrete valuation ring, so every nonzero rational function has a principal divisor
The divisor class group is
A Weil divisor on is a finite formal sum
over integral codimension-one closed subschemes . Since is regular in codimension one, the local ring at the generic point of each is a discrete valuation ring. A nonzero rational function therefore defines the principal divisor . The divisor class group is
False. For , take the affine hypersurface
It is an integral scheme, and its only possible singular point is the origin, which has codimension two. Hence it is regular in codimension one; as a hypersurface it satisfies Serre's condition , so the Serre criterion for normality also makes it a normal scheme. The Divisor class group of an A-type surface singularity is
generated by . Thus a closed affine subscheme satisfying can have nonzero torsion in its class group.