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Pulling back the equation of a Weil divisor can give zero
Statement refuted
The claim refuted is: for every morphism of schemes and every Weil divisor on , the pullback is defined by pulling back local equations of the prime divisors . The closed-point map landing at the origin refutes it for the prime divisor : the structure-sheaf map sends its equation to . This zero is a meromorphic function, but not a meromorphic unit, so it does not give the pullback of the equation as a Cartier-divisor equation; the source also has no prime divisors.
Facts & Assumptions
Given: A field , the affine line with origin , the one-point scheme , and the morphism corresponding to the -algebra homomorphism with .
is a normal Noetherian integral scheme of dimension one; its prime divisors are the closed points for the irreducible polynomials , and is a prime divisor with local equation . The element is a meromorphic unit on , that is, , and it is a regular section of , i.e. a nonzerodivisor in every local ring of (Weil divisor normal noetherian scheme).
is a zero-dimensional integral scheme with and the constant sheaf (Sheaf total quotient rings); it has no prime divisors, because a prime divisor requires local-ring dimension one at its generic point, whereas the unique stalk of is the zero-dimensional field , so and the only Weil divisor on is the zero divisor (Weil divisor normal noetherian scheme).
The morphism is the spectrum of the -algebra homomorphism , (The underlying space of an affine spectrum, Morphisms of schemes); on global sections . Its image is the origin: the unique prime of pulls back to , so .
A pullback of all meromorphic functions is induced when carries every stalkwise nonzerodivisor section to a stalkwise nonzerodivisor. Pullback of a particular Cartier divisor requires only an admissible datum whose pulled-back numerators and denominators are regular. For an effective Cartier divisor, its pullback is defined exactly when its pulled-back regular local equations remain regular (Pullback of a Cartier divisor).
A section defines an effective Cartier divisor on only when multiplication by is injective on the local rings, i.e. when is a nonzerodivisor (Effective cartier divisor, Effective Cartier divisors are closed subschemes cut out by regular equations).
Counterexample
The origin is a prime divisor of with local equation , and is a regular function on ; its divisor is the Weil divisor , whose local equation at the origin is the meromorphic unit .
The structure-sheaf pullback sends to . This zero is a meromorphic function on , but it is not a regular section: multiplication by on the nonzero ring is not injective. Since is a regular section on , fails the condition in [F4] for inducing a pullback map on meromorphic functions. Thus no pullback of the local equation as a meromorphic unit is defined, and no order of its image can be evaluated.
The set-theoretic inverse image is not a divisor of the source either: by [F3], a closed subscheme of codimension zero rather than a formal sum of prime divisors, and by [F2], so there is no nonzero Weil divisor of that could receive the class .
The failure is not an artefact of the choice of equation: by [F5] the pulled-back equation cuts out no effective Cartier divisor on , so the associated invertible-sheaf construction also has no input; the divisor of the target simply has no pulled-back divisor along in the sense of pulling back its equation.
Therefore the proposed pullback of the Weil divisor along the morphism is undefined: the structure-sheaf image of its equation is , which is not a meromorphic unit, and the source possesses no prime divisor at all. This refutes the general claim that arbitrary morphisms carry a pullback of Weil divisors defined by pulling back local equations.
The example is minimal in two independent ways. The source is a single point, so the failure cannot be blamed on a poor cover choice, and the target is the affine line, the simplest scheme carrying a nonzero prime divisor with a global equation. The same phenomenon occurs for the constant morphism with , where the inverse image of is the whole source of dimension one; there the pulled-back equation is again and is not regular. The positive results for pullback on this page therefore carry explicit hypotheses, such as flatness, ensuring that pulled-back regular equations stay regular (Pullback of a Cartier divisor).
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Sources
- The Stacks Project, Divisors, Definitions 31.14.12–31.14.13 and Definition 31.27.2 (standard reference, not scraped)
- Ravi Vakil, The Rising Sea, Ch. 15 §15.1 (standard reference, not scraped)