We continue in the quest towards descent theory. Today, we discuss the fpqc topology and prove the fundamental fact that representable functors are sheaves.
We now describe another topology on the category of schemes. First, we need the notion of an fpqc morphism.
Definition 1 A morphism of schemes
is called fpqc if the following conditions are satisfied:
is faithfully flat (i.e., flat and surjective)
is quasi-compact.
Indeed, “fpqc” is an abbreviation for “fidelement plat et quasi-compact.” It is possible to carry out faithfully flat descent with a weaker notion of fpqc morphism, for which I refer you to Vistoli’s part of FGA explained.
As with many interesting classes of morphisms of schemes, we have a standard list of properties.
Proposition 2
- Fpqc morphisms are closed under base-change and composition.
- If
are fpqc morphisms of
-schemes, then
is fpqc.
Proof: We shall omit the proof, since the properties of flatness, quasi-compactness, and surjectivity are all (as is well-known) preserved under base-change, composition, and products. This can be looked up in EGA 1 (except for flatness, for which you need to go to EGA 4 or Hartshorne III).
So we have the notion of fpqc morphism. Next, we use this to define a topology.
Definition 3 Consider the category
of
-schemes, for
a fixed base-scheme. The fpqc topology on
is defined as follows: A collection of arrows
is said to be a cover of
if the map
is an fpqc morphism.
This implies in particular that each is a flat morphism. We need now to check that this is indeed a topology.
- An isomorphism is obviously an fpqc morphism, so an isomorphism is indeed a cover.
- If
is a fpqc cover and
, then the morphism
is equal to the base-change
, hence is fpqc.
- Suppose
is a cover for each
and
is a cover, I claim that
is a cover. Indeed, we have that
factors through
and we know that each morphism in the composition is flat (since the coproduct of flat morphisms is flat) and quasi-compact (since the coproduct of quasi-compact morphisms is quasi-compact). Similarly for surjectivity. It follows that
is an fpqc cover.
So we have another topology on the category of schemes, which is very fine in that it is finer than many other topologies of interest (e.g. the fppf and etale topologies, which I will discuss at some other point).
Note that, strictly speaking, the topology thus defined is not finer than the usual Zariski topology! The reason is that if we have an open set , the inclusion
need not be quasi-compact. It is, however, finer than the “finite Zariski topology,” when we only allow finite open covers, on the category of noetherian schemes. But this is a cop-out. For the more general definition of fpqc morphism that gives a better theory, I refer the reader to Vistoli’s article in FGA Explained (also openly available on the arXiv). For simplicity, however, I will restrict myself to a special case which is still rather interesting.
This topology is really awesome because, first of all:
Theorem 4 Any representable functor on the category
of
-schemes is a sheaf in the fpqc topology.
In other words, if we have an fpqc cover of a scheme
and morphsims
that glue on the fibered products, then there is a unique morphism
that pulls back to each of these.
Write . There is a map
, by assumption, which is a fpqc morphism, and the two pull-backs to
are equal. We need to show that
factors through
.
In particular, we are reduced to proving:
Lemma 5 Let
be a fpqc morphism of
=schemes. Then the diagram
is a coequalizer in the category of
-schemes.
Recall what this means translated into informal English. To hom out of is the same thing as homming out of
such that the two pull-backs to
are the same.
It is in fact true (cf. Demazure-Gabriel or EGA IV-2 2.3.12) that in the lemma, the topology of is the quotient topology of
under the equivalence relation generated by
(furthermore, the diagram is a coequalizer in the category of locally ringed spaces, which implies this). This lets you deduce all sorts of dandy descent-ish results to the effect that if a base-change of a given morphism by a fpqc morphism has a given property (e.g. is closed, open, etc.), then so is the initial un-base-changed morphism.
Anyway, back to the lemma. To prove this, we will show that for any scheme , the diagram
is an equalizer diagram, which is the meaning of the lemma. First, note that is an epimorphism in the category of
-schemes. This implies that the first map in the above diagram of sets is an injection. This is because
is surjective on the underlying topological spaces and the maps on the local rings are injective, by:
Lemma 6 Let
be a flat local homorphism of local rings. Then it is injective.
Proof: One approach is to argue that is faithfully flat because it is flat, and for each (unique!) maximal ideal
, we have
because
is local. Any faithfully flat extension of rings is injective, because if
is faithfully flat, we can tensor with the faithfully flat module
to get a morphism of
-algebras,
which is injective (it has a section !), and consequently (by faithful flatness), the original map
is itself injective.
This completes the proof.
Remark: In an arbitrary category with fibered products, an epimorphism does not generally induce a coequalizer diagram:
if it does, it is called an effective epimorphism. The conclusion of this result is that an fpqc morphism is an effective epimorphism. (Note that any base-change of it is an effective epimorphism, since a base-change of a fpqc morphism is still fpqc.)
Reduction to the case of affine: But we still need to show that if a morphism
glues (i.e. pulls back to the same thing in
), then it comes from something in
. To see this, we can assume first of all that
is affine. The reason is that we can cover
by open affines
. We can replicate the situation of the lemma with
and
. If we can prove that the lemma is true for open affines, then given a map
, we can show that there are maps
that come from
. These necessarily restrict to the same thing on
, though, since they restrict to the same thing on
, and
is an epimorphism in the category of -schemes by the above. So we can glue them (in the Zariski topology!) to get
.
So in showing that (1) is a coequalizer, we need only restrict to the case of affine. And now we are going to reduce to the case of
affine.
Reduction to the case of affine: If
is open and affine, then the map
satisfies the same condition of the lemma: it is a fpqc morphism. Suppose we know that (1) is exact when
is an affine scheme (such as
). Throughout,
is fixed (say affine by the above paragraph).
If we have the data pulling back equally by
, then we get data
for each
open affine pulling back equally by the canonical projections corresponding to
. It thus follows that if (1) is exact for
affine and we have the data
, then we can (by descent for the case of one affine) define a bunch of maps
for each
open affine that pull back to
. These must glue on
because they pull back to the same thing in
.
Thus, we are reduced to the case affine (and
affine).
Reduction to the case affine: We are now reduced to proving that (1) is exact for
affine and
a fpqc morphism. Next, we will reduce even further, to the case of
affine.
Now is affine, so
is quasi-compact. There is a cover of
by a finite number of open affines
. The coproduct
is affine and surjects onto
by, in fact, a fpqc morphism.
There is a diagram:
The vertical maps are injections because (and all its base-changes, products) are fpqc, hence epimorphisms by what has already been proved. But the first leftmost vertical map is an isomorphism. Now if the bottom map is an equalizer (which would be the case if we had proved the result for affine schemes), an easy diagram chase then shows that the top one is an equalizer too. The details of the diagram chase are best checked for oneself.
The final case: Whew! So, finally, our lemma, and thus the theorem on representable functors being sheaves, will be proved if we show that:
Lemma 7 Suppose
are affine schemes and
a fpqc morphism. Then (1) is exact.
Proof: Suppose . Then there is a homomorphism
which makes
into a faithfully flat
-algebra. For now, assume that
so we don’t have to worry about “
-morphisms,” only regular morphisms.
We will show that the sequence of sets
is exact (i.e. an equalizer of sets) for a faithfully flat
-algebra. It follows that if we have a homomorphism
whose two images in
are the same, the image actually lies in
.
Now we already know that is injective. We need to show that the map
has kernel equal to the image of
. In particular, the associated sequence of
-modules
needs to be shown to be exact.
Suppose there is a section of , i.e. a ring homomorphism
such that
is the identity (equivalently, a morphism of
-algebras
). Then if
, we have
. There is a homomorphism
. We have
so that .
In general, we don’t have a section. But we do have one if we make a faithfully flat base-change. If is faithfully flat, then
is faithfully flat too. If we have the sequence
, we can base-change by
to get the sequence
But this is exact because admits an obvious section, namely multiplication. So the original sequence is itself exact because
is faithfully flat.
The proof of the lemma, and thus of the full theorem on representable functors, is thus complete for . In particular, the fpqc topology on the category of plain schemes is such that every representable functor is a sheaf.
The general case can be deduced as follows. Suppose is a map of
-schemes and
is an
-morphism that pulls back appropriately. Then the above reasoning says that we can get a morphism
that pulls back to this, but it needn’t be an
-morphism a priori.
So we need to show that equals
. To see this, pull-back both to
. On the one hand, we get
, which is equal to the structure
, because
is an
-morphism. On the other hand, we get
because
is an
-morphism. Since
is an epimorphism of schemes, it follows that
equals
. In particular,
is also a sheaf. This completes the proof of the theorem.
This method of proof can in fact be used to obtain the following general fact:
Proposition 8 Suppose
is a contravariant functor from the category of
-schemes to
. Suppose that
is a sheaf in the Zariski topology
- If
is a faithfully flat morphism of affine schemes, then
is exact.
Then
is a sheaf in the fpqc topology.
For a proof, see FGA Explained. I believe it is also in FGA.
February 17, 2011 at 10:27 am
Prop. 8 is also proved in II.1 of Milne’s Etale Cohomology, by the way, and it doesn’t use anything (certainly not descent theory).