I’ve not been a very good MaBloWriMo participant this time around. Nonetheless, coursework does tend to sap the time and energy I have for blogging. I have been independently looking as of late at the formal function theorem in algebraic geometry, which can be phrased loosely by saying that the higher direct images under a proper morphism of schemes commute with formal completions. This is proved in Hartshorne for projective morphisms by first verifying it for the standard line bundles and then using a (subtle) exactness argument, but EGA III.4 presents an argument for general proper morphisms. The result is quite powerful, with applications for instance to Zariski’s main theorem (or at least a weak version thereof), and I would like to say a few words about it at some point, at least after I have a fuller understanding of it than I do now. So I confess to having been distracted by algebraic geometry.
For today, I shall continue with the story on the Koszul complex, and barely begin the connection between Koszul homology and regular sequences. Last time, we were trying to prove:
Proposition 24 Let
be linear functionals. Then the Koszul complex
is the tensor product
as differential graded algebras.
So in other words, not only is the algebra structure preserved by taking the tensor product, but when you think of them as chain complexes, . This is a condition on the differentials. Here
is the functional
where the last map is addition.
So for instance this implies that for two tuples
. This implies that in the case we care about most, catenation of lists of elements corresponds to the tensor product.
Before starting the proof, let us talk about differential graded algebras. This is not really necessary, but the Koszul complex is a special case of a differential graded algebra.
Definition 25 A differential graded algebra is a graded unital associative algebra
together with a derivation
of degree one (i.e. increasing the degree by one). This derivation is required to satisfy a graded version of the usual Leibnitz rule:
. Moreover,
is required to be a complex:
. So the derivation is a differential.
So the basic example to keep in mind here is the case of the Koszul complex. This is an algebra (it’s the exterior algebra). The derivation was immediately checked to be a differential. There is apparently a category-theoretic interpretation of DGAs, but I have not studied this.
Proof: As already stated, the graded algebra structures on are the same. This is, I suppose, a piece of linear algebra, about exterior products, and I won’t prove it here. The point is that the differentials coincide. The differential on
is given by extending the homomorphism
to a derivation. This extension is unique.
Now I claim that tensor product of two differential graded algebras with the product differential is a DGA itself. This says that the tensor product of the differentials is itself not only a differential, but a derivation on the tensor product. This is what we want, because then the product differential on is a derivation, and since the differential induced by
is one too, the two must coincide as they coincide in degree one. This is a routine computation, which is not suitable to blogging. So one should check that if
are DGAs, then
, where
has the graded algebra structure and
is the product differential, is indeed a DGA.
0.7. Koszul homology and regular sequences
In general, the Koszul complex is not exact. The degree to which its homology vanishes does, however, say something. It tells you the length of regular sequences, or alternatively the depth.
First, we can compute the Koszul homology at the end. Let for
a commutative ring, and let
be an
-module. Then
and
from the definitions. The differential
is simply
. In particular, we see that the homology of the Koszul complex at dimension zero is
. More generally, this argument and the right-exactness of the tensor product shows that:
Proposition 26 We have
So in general, the zeroth Koszul homology will be nonzero. But the higher ones vanish for regular sequences. We are aiming for:
Proposition 27 Let
be an
-regular sequence. Then
for
.
Proof: The argument, as expected, will be inductive. The first step is the core of the idea, though. The Koszul complex for consisting of one element is
It is clear that the homology of this complex detects the nonzerodivisorness of on
. In general, the result is an inductivization of the above observation. When
, the above proposition is true. Let us assume it true for
, and we prove it for
. So let
be an
-regular sequence, and let
. We know that the homology of the complex
vanishes in dimension , and is
for dimension zero. This is “close” to what we want as
and
are “similar,” but we need a way of going between them. So far, we know that
and that is a nonzerodivisor on
. That way is provided by:
Lemma 28 Let
be a chain complex of
-modules such that
is exact in positive dimension. Suppose
is a nonzerodivisor on
. Then
is acyclic in positive dimension.
Proof: Because I’m in the mood to use a sledgehammer, let’s deduce this from a spectral sequence. We know that there is a double complex .
There are two spectral sequences that converge to the same thing. For the first homology, we take the horizontal homology, and then the vertical homology of the horizontal homology. But since is just
and zero, the horizontal homology is zero except in dimension zero, where it’s
located at
and
. The vertical differential is multiplication by
. When we take the next page in this spectral sequence, the fact that
is
-regular implies that it is
at the origin and nothing elsewhere. In particular, the second
page of this spectral sequence is centered at the origin. This spectral sequence converges to the total homology of the double complex. That total homology is
.
But the spectral sequence obviously collapses at , and the convergent limit
as a result. But from the thus calculated
page of the spectral sequence, we find that there is nothing about the nonzero diagonals, and consequently since the sequence converges
, we see that
is acyclic in positive dimensions.
Now, with the lemma established, the result is clear. I should note that the lemma can be proved slightly less conceptually but more elementarily (without spectral sequences) if one writes some exact sequences.
This result is very far from the best we can do. The Koszul homology may very well be zero without the initial sequence being a regular sequence. The more natural result, which can be proved using more sophisticated refinements of the above reasoning, is that Koszul homology detects the length of a maximal
-sequence in the ideal
. I want to get to this result, but first there are some interesting things one can do with what’s been proved alone in algebraic geometry.
November 14, 2010 at 12:26 pm
Hurray for the Theorem on Formal Functions. At first it seemed really bizarre and useless to me, but I’ve come to realize that it is quite powerful and can be used in places I never imagined.