I’d like to discuss today a category-theoretic characterization of Zariski open immersions of rings, which I learned from Toen-Vezzosi’s article.

Theorem 1 If {f: A \rightarrow B} is a finitely presented morphism of commutative rings, then {\mathrm{Spec} B \rightarrow \mathrm{Spec} A} is an open immersion if and only if the restriction functor {D^-(B) \rightarrow D^-(A)} between derived categories is fully faithful.

Toen and Vezzosi use this to define a Zariski open immersion in the derived context, but I’d like to work out carefully what this means in the classical sense. If one has an open immersion {f: A \rightarrow B} (for instance, a localization {A \rightarrow A_f}), then the pull-back on derived categories is fully faithful: in other words, the composite of push-forward and pull-back is the identity. (more…)