Integral scheme Created 2026-09-28 Updated 2026-10-06
An integral scheme is a nonempty scheme that is both reduced and irreducible. An affine scheme is integral exactly when is an integral domain.
Irreducible scheme 2026-10-07
An irreducible scheme is one whose underlying topological space is a nonempty irreducible topological space. It can have nilpotent elements in its structure sheaf; irreducibility concerns only the topology. A reduced scheme is an integral scheme precisely when it is irreducible.
Line bundle Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-06
A line bundle on a scheme is a locally free sheaf of rank one. Its global sections can define a morphism to projective space when they have no common zero.
Morphism of locally ringed spaces 2026-10-06
A morphism is a continuous map together with a homomorphism of sheaves of rings whose induced map on every stalk is a local homomorphism. Applied to schemes, this is exactly a morphism of schemes.
Multiplicative group scheme 2026-10-14
The multiplicative group scheme represents units: its -points are . Multiplication is specified by on the coordinate ring. It is the principal open subset of the affine line and the one-dimensional split algebraic torus.
// Target: ringed-space.bigb
Normalization of an integral scheme 2026-10-14
For an integral scheme, take on each affine chart the integral closure of its coordinate ring in its function field. Integral closure commutes with localization, so these rings glue to a normal scheme with an integral birational morphism to the original scheme. This is the normalization. It need not be finite without additional hypotheses; for an algebraic curve of finite type over a field it is finite. It is an isomorphism exactly when the original scheme is normal.
Open subscheme Created 2026-10-07 Updated 2026-10-14
An open subscheme of a scheme is an open subset equipped with the restriction of its structure sheaf. Its inclusion is an open immersion. Every scheme is covered by affine open subschemes. Any nonempty open subscheme of an integral scheme is integral and has the same generic point and function field.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2005 iii Paper 17 2 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Use the toric scheme over a base ring construction over . Take the cocharacter lattice of an algebraic torus and dual character lattice of an algebraic torus . For every , setThese cones in toric geometry, together with their rays and the zero cone, form an infinite fan in toric geometry. Adjacent two-dimensional cones meet in their common ray; all other pairs meet only at zero. Thus the face and intersection axioms hold even though there are infinitely many charts.
The consecutive vectors are a basis of , since their determinant is . The dual cone has integral generatorswith , , , . Its integral points form the free commutative monoid . Hence the associated semigroup algebra chart is simplyOn the dense algebraic torus, write and . The chart coordinates areAlthough these expressions use inverses on the torus, are regular on the indicated charts.
The common-ray chart of and is , identified with byThe inverse is , . Nonadjacent charts meet in the common dense torus, and all transition maps agree there with the same characters of an algebraic torus , so their cocycle identities follow. By gluing of schemes along open subschemes, these charts construct a scheme .
The lattice projection carries every into the nonnegative ray of the fan of the affine line. It therefore defines a toric morphismExplicitly its pullback on each chart sends to . The adjacent-chart formula preserves that product, so the local morphisms glue.
Compute its scheme-theoretic fibre over :This is the union of the two coordinate affine lines, each with multiplicity one. Let denote the toric divisor corresponding to . Its part in is , with coordinate ; its part in is , with coordinate . On the overlap these coordinates satisfy . Consequently these two affine lines glue toThe neighbouring components meet at the section , isomorphic to . No other components meet. Every special-fibre chart has exactly these two branches and no embedded or extra components. ThusThe union is an infinite chain, not a finite-type curve disguised as one: its infinitely many components account for the infinitely many toric charts.
Over the principal open subset , both and are units because their product is . Every chart then becomes the same torus chart:The transition maps identify the coordinate exactly, soThis is the generic region described in the question; over the actual generic point of its fibre is .
The construction is also flat. Indeed, each node chart has a free -module basisEvery monomial reduces uniquely by taking out , and the resulting monomials are independent. Thus the chart morphisms are flat morphisms. This verifies directly that the semistable infinite chain from a toric fan is a degeneration of the multiplicative group scheme rather than an unrelated special fibre.
The infinite toric fan, its chain of projective lines, and the period-three quotient fibre
. Details. Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2005 iii Paper 17 3 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Write . The formal completion of a scheme restricts on each chart toThus is a formal scheme over . The ordinary torus has disappeared from its underlying space: every point of lies on . In particular, only adjacent completed charts intersect, and their two possible branch overlaps inside any one chart are disjoint.
Construct the action using the integral lattice automorphismIt carries to and to , so induces a toric morphism that is an automorphism. It preserves the lattice projection to the second coordinate, hence preserves and . On the dense algebraic torus it isIn the local coordinates this sends to withThese identities show regularity on every chart without requiring to be invertible there. They also make the action continuous in the -adic topology, so it extends to . Its powers shift to ; no nonzero power is the identity or fixes a point of the formal support. Therefore is a nontrivial infinite cyclic group acting freely.
Construct the quotient explicitly, using three representative chartswith . Glue their branch opens cyclically, taking subscripts modulo three, byThese are genuine isomorphisms of formal schemes. For example, the completed localization of an adic ring on the first open iswhere . On the second it is , and the gluing sends to and to . Thus it preserves and is continuous, with a continuous inverse.
Inside we haveConsequently there are no triple-overlap conditions left to check: the two branch identifications in a chart have disjoint domains. By gluing of schemes along open subschemes in its formal version, the three charts produce a formal scheme over . Equivalently, reduce the same gluing modulo for every ; this constructs compatible schemes , all on the same underlying space, with . Their inverse system has precisely the displayed formal charts.
For every integer , map isomorphically to by identifying its coordinates with the corresponding capital-letter coordinates. The adjacent-chart formulas agree with the cyclic identifications, so these maps glue toThey are invariant under , and is the disjoint union of the translated opens , each mapping isomorphically onto . The group permutes these copies transitively. Thus the fibres of are exactly the -orbits, and invariant sections on this inverse image are exactly the sections on .
To verify the quotient property also for morphisms, take a -invariant morphism . Its restrictions to agree on the adjacent branch opens. On the closing overlap they agree because the translated chart has the same restriction as under . Hence they descend to a unique morphism . This proves that the gluing is the cyclic formal quotient of the infinite toric chain:Its fibre modulo is a triangle of three projective lines over , each meeting its two neighbours at its two boundary sections. More generally, a shift by any gives an -gon. Completion is important here: translates of a formal chart are disjoint, whereas all ordinary toric charts still share the generic torus.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2005 iii Paper 17 4 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Let . Work with commutative rings and take a quotient to mean a surjection , considered up to an isomorphism of commuting with . Equivalently, retain its kernel as a submodule of . Here a rank- locally free module is finite locally free, or equivalently a finite projective module of constant rank . A ring homomorphism sends the quotient toThe tensor product of modules is right exact and preserves finite projectivity, so this defines the functorial action. We prove scheme representability in the usual functor of points sense:naturally in . The Grassmannian of locally free quotients will be constructed explicitly.
Assume first , and choose a basis of . For every ordered subset , consider those quotients for which are a basis of . This choice gives a unique identification , in which the quotient is represented by an matrix whose columns indexed by are the identity matrix. Its remaining entries are arbitrary elements of . Thus this subfunctor is represented by the affine schemeThere is no further change-of-basis ambiguity: the selected quotient images already specify its basis uniquely.
For another subset , write for the square submatrix consisting of the columns. The same quotient lies in the chart exactly when its determinant is a unit. Consequently the chart overlap is the principal open subsetOn that overlap the matrix normalized in the basis isThe entries are regular on by the adjugate matrix. Conversely, the columns of form , so normalization back to recovers . The transition is therefore an isomorphism .
The cocycle identity follows from the same matrix computation, not just an assertion about bases. On a triple overlap, normalization first to and then to givesThis is direct normalization from to . By gluing of schemes along open subschemes, the standard affine charts of the quotient Grassmannian therefore glue to a scheme over .
The universal matrices also glue a universal quotient. On , use the surjectionOn overlaps, identify its targets by , precisely the transition matrix above. The cocycle identity glues these free sheaves into a rank- locally free sheaf and glues the maps into . Its kernel is locally free of rank : on an explicit basis isHence we have the universal exact sequence
It remains to verify that these charts capture every quotient, including a nonfree projective target. Given , define as the locus where the selected images , , form a basis. This is open: locally trivialize the locally free sheaf associated with , and it is the nonvanishing locus of the corresponding maximal minor. The sets cover . Indeed, at every prime , the images of all vectors span the -dimensional residue-field quotient, so some of them form a basis there. Their determinant is a unit in , hence they form a basis over that local ring and on an open neighbourhood of .
On , trivialize using exactly those selected images. The remaining columns give regular functions and hence a morphism . On , the normalized matrices satisfy the displayed transition formula, so the local morphisms glue to a morphismIts pullback of the universal quotient is the original quotient, because this is true in each of the specified bases. Conversely, any morphism pulls back the universal sequence to a rank- locally free quotient. On each inverse-image chart its matrix is exactly the normalized matrix used to reconstruct , so the two constructions are inverse. They are unchanged by an isomorphism commuting with the quotient map, and they commute with every base change . This proves the natural bijection and thereforeTaking kernels over a field identifies this with the usual Grassmannian of -dimensional subspaces of . The construction itself does not assume the target module is globally free.
For , the only quotient is zero; for , a surjection to a locally free module of the same rank is an isomorphism, as can be checked locally by its determinant. Both endpoint functors are represented by . If , no such quotient exists over a nonempty test scheme, and the representing scheme is empty. Finally, scheme representability does not mean representation by a single ring: already gives , which is not affine. This is the standard algebraic-geometric meaning of representability for the functor on rings here.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2007 iii Paper 23 1 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Use the quotient convention for projective space. To a scheme , associate the set of pairswhere 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 writeThese 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 asA 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 isThis 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 sequenceIt remains exact after any base change. Taking its dual of a sheaf over a field givesFor , the first term has rank one; taking determinants yieldsExplicitly, for on the overlap of the two affine charts, , the same transition as after changing one local frame's sign.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2007 iii Paper 23 6 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Here is algebraically closed and is a connected smooth projective curve. For a scheme over , let . The degree- Picard functor of a curve assignsOne can equivalently take the associated faithfully flat sheaf. It is essential to divide out by line bundles from the base: a parameter space should remember the family on , not an independent base line bundle.
Choose . A class can be normalized as , with its canonical trivialization along . Since , an automorphism of a line bundle is multiplication by a base unit, and preserving this normalization forces that unit to be . Descent of line bundles is effective, so normalized bundles satisfy the faithfully flat sheaf condition with no automorphism ambiguity. Thus this normalized description works on families, including nonreduced bases, rather than only on -points.
We construct a representing scheme by Picard charts from nonspecial divisors. Fix and put . The symmetric product of a curve represents relative effective Cartier divisors on a curve of degree and has a universal divisor . This uses the scheme symmetric product, not the naive set of unordered -points. Locally on a smooth curve, a divisor of length is described by a monic polynomial in a smooth coordinate; its coefficients are elementary symmetric functions, so this construction includes coincident points in any characteristic. These local descriptions give the usual effective-divisor interpretation of the symmetric product.
Let be the open set where . It is open by semicontinuity theorem for coherent cohomology. The Riemann-Roch theorem gives there, so is the unique effective divisor in its line-bundle class. For every fixed effective divisor of degree , take a copy of , with familyof degree . Normalize it along as above.
This chart represents the open subfunctor defined byIndeed, for a family satisfying that condition, cohomology and base change for line bundles on a curve makes a line bundle on , with formation commuting with base change. The rank is one by Riemann-Roch theorem. The evaluation mapis a nonzero section on each fibre, up to the base twist. Its zero scheme is a relative effective Cartier divisor on a curve of degree . To check the family assertion, source and target are flat over and the fibre maps are injections of line bundles on an integral curve, so their cokernel is flat over . Their zeros are Cartier, and the zero scheme is proper with finite fibres of length , hence finite flat of degree . It therefore defines a unique map . Conversely this construction recovers the family modulo a base line bundle.
The base-change step controls infinitesimal families as well. Locally, a finite free complex computes the two cohomology groups. Vanishing of its degree-one cokernel on fibres makes the last differential surjective by the Nakayama lemma. Splitting that differential leaves a locally free degree-zero kernel of rank one and commutes with base change. This is the standard finite-complex form of the permitted cohomology semicontinuity and base-change results.
These chart subfunctors cover all degree- families. For a geometric-fibre line bundle of degree , the preceding solution gives and . Choose points successively so that each imposes one independent condition on the current section space. At each stage that space is nonzero; a nonzero section has finitely many zeros, so a point outside its zero set can be chosen, also outside the finitely many previously chosen points. For their sum ,and Riemann-Roch theorem forces . The points may be chosen in even when the fibre field extends , since is infinite and a nonzero section on the base-changed curve has only finitely many zeros. Thus fixed divisors defined over suffice. Upper semicontinuity gives an open neighbourhood on the base for each successful .
It remains to glue the charts explicitly. On , the locusis open. The line bundle inside the braces has degree ; its unique section up to scale has an effective zero divisor . Base change and the evaluation construction make a morphism . It satisfies . Reversing gives its inverse. On triple overlaps the transition maps compose correctly because the residual effective divisor is unique. Hence the copies glue along these open isomorphisms to a scheme .
The normalized bundles glue as well: on overlaps their normalized isomorphisms exist and are unique, so they satisfy the cocycle condition. Let denote the resulting universal normalized line bundle on . For any , the open cover where the conditions for some hold gives compatible maps , and thus a unique map . Pulling back reverses this procedure. We have established a natural bijectionThis proves representability of the full functor, not just a parametrization of individual line bundles. The nonspecial-divisor construction is also recorded in Stacks Project, Picard scheme of a curve.
Finally tensoring by is a natural isomorphism for every integer . Transporting the universal bundle back constructs its degree- representative , usually denoted . Thus every degree component is represented. These identifications depend on the chosen point and twist; intrinsically the degree-zero component is a group scheme and each degree component is its torsor.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2007 iii Paper 89 4 i Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Use the polynomial graded ring , as in the PDF; the doubled brackets in the converted TeX are an OCR error. Let denote the homogeneous defining ideal. The four cubic coordinates in the proposed map never vanish simultaneously on , since and already have that property. Substitution makes each generator of zero, so they define a morphism into the generic fibre.
The two standard opens and cover . Indeed, a homogeneous prime containing contains by , and then contains by . Such a prime contains the irrelevant ideal and gives no point of Proj.
On put , , . Over , where is invertible, the equations giveThus the generic-fibre chart is exactly . The proposed map restricts to this isomorphism with . On put . The equations giveso this chart is , and the map has . On the overlap . These are the standard two charts of the projective line, proving the scheme-level isomorphismEquivalently, rescaling by gives the usual twisted cubic. The chart proof also shows that the extra cubic relation introduces no additional generic-fibre scheme structure.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2007 iii Paper 89 5 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Choose an ordered affine open cover of the separated scheme. For a quasi-coherent sheaf , the Čech cochain groups and differential areTerms corresponding to empty intersections are zero. Restriction commutes with restriction, so the terms in cancel in pairs. DefineHere an affine cover computes the Čech groups independently of the chosen affine cover. The reason is that finite intersections of affine opens in a separated scheme are affine: the intersection of two is the inverse image of the closed diagonal inside their affine product. Repeating gives the finite-intersection assertion. Quasi-coherent sheaves have no higher cohomology on these intersections. Apply an injective resolution of the sheaf and form the double complex of its Čech cochains. In one direction the higher cohomology vanishes on every affine intersection, leaving precisely the displayed Čech complex. In the other direction the augmented Čech complex of the flasque resolution terms is exact, leaving the global-section resolution computing sheaf cohomology. Thus the two cohomologies agree, and refinement maps between affine-cover complexes induce the same groups. No such affine-intersection claim is being made for arbitrary nonseparated schemes.
For an exact sequence of quasi-coherent sheaves, sections on an affine intersection give an exact sequence of modules, including surjectivity: this follows from the equivalence between quasi-coherent sheaves and modules on an affine scheme. Taking products yields a short exact sequence of Čech cochain complexes. To describe the connecting map, lift a degree- cocycle in to a cochain in . Its differential maps to zero in and therefore is a cocycle in . Changing the lift adds a coboundary there; changing the original representative does the same. This defines the connecting homomorphism. The same lift-and-differentiate argument shows that a class is in its kernel exactly when it lifts to a cocycle in the middle complex, and verifies exactness at the other terms. Thus the resulting sequence isThe sequence must be in quasi-coherent sheaves for this affine-sections argument; that is the intended category here.
For the punctured affine plane, use and . Their rings are and , and the intersection ring is . The two-open Čech complex isConsequentlyThe denominator contains precisely the span of Laurent monomials for which at least one exponent is nonnegative. Every Laurent polynomial has a unique monomial expansion, so the remaining monomials are linearly independent in the quotient and span it. Thereforea countably infinite-dimensional vector space. The brackets here denote cohomology classes. This calculates the Čech cohomology of the punctured affine plane, rather than merely observing that some nonzero cohomology exists.
