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For any sheaf and any local section, we have a general fact that the support of the local section (not to be confused with the support of the sheaf) is closed. (c.f. Hartshorne p.67 ex-2.1.14)

Recall: $\text{supp}(s) := \{x\in \text{dom}(s): s_x\neq 0 \}$.

When $R$ is an integral domain, then the support of the structure sheaf of $\text{Spec}(R)$ is even open (not hard to prove: pass to local the section is represented by some $a/b$, while $a\neq 0$ because $R$ is an domain. This presentation is local, and nonvanishing by definition of "$0$" in a ring of fractions).

Question

If $R$ is just a commutative ring, is there any criterion for that any local section of $\text{Spec}(R)$ has open support?

Student
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    What you claim to be "not hard to prove" is completely false and of course Hartshorne says nothing of the kind in his exercise. (He says that some set is not necessarily closed but that certainly does not mean that it is open) – Georges Elencwajg May 16 '18 at 22:18
  • Thank you. I have corrected what the reference refers to, and given a sketch for the statement I claimed easy. – Student May 16 '18 at 22:27
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    @GeorgesElencwajg Why do you say this statement is completely false? Certainly in an integral domain, every global section has open support (either $\emptyset$ or all of $\text{Spec}(R)$). And because localizations of domains are domains, we get the same property for local sections by checking on basic affine opens. – Alex Kruckman May 17 '18 at 14:15
  • I guess it's because it is not too important.. lots of people I talked to tended to think it is false too. But this is algebraic geometry! It is too abstract and large, so it is often hard to know if a "random" statement is true or not. – Student May 17 '18 at 15:52
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    @Alex Kruckman: ths support of a section of a sky-scraper sheaf is almost never open. Same for section of the structure sheaf of a closed subvariety of an affine variety If you read the question carefully you will notice that the OP asks about local sections of "any sheaf" in the first line.. – Georges Elencwajg May 17 '18 at 16:41
  • Ah ha I see!! Sorry, I am editing that. – Student May 17 '18 at 16:44
  • @GeorgesElencwajg Ah, you're right. In the highlighted question, no sheaf is mentioned, so I interperted "any local section of $\text{spec}(R)$" to mean "any local section of the structure sheaf on $\text{spec}(R)$". – Alex Kruckman May 17 '18 at 16:45
  • Sorry guys! I have fixed it. – Student May 17 '18 at 16:45

2 Answers2

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If $R$ is Noetherian and absolutely flat (meaning that every $R$-module is flat), then $R$ has the property you want. The openness of the support of a local section of $\mathscr{O}_{\mathrm{Spec}(R)}$ can be checked on a covering by standard open sets, and formation of support is compatible with restriction to smaller open sets. This means it is enough to check that for any $f\in R$, any element of $\mathscr{O}_{\mathrm{Spec}(R)}(D(f))=R_f$ has open support. Since $R_f$ is Noetherian and absolutely flat when $R$ is, it is then enough to consider global sections. If $r\in R$, then $\mathrm{supp}(r)=V(\mathrm{Ann}_R(r))$. This is the image of the closed immersion $\mathrm{Spec}(R/\mathrm{Ann}_R(r))\hookrightarrow\mathrm{Spec}(R)$. The assumption that $R$ is absolutely flat ensures that this closed immersion is flat, while the assumption that $R$ is Noetherian ensures that this closed immersion is of finite presentation. A morphism of schemes which is flat and (locally) of finite presentation is necessarily open. Thus $\mathrm{supp}(r)=V(\mathrm{Ann}_R(r))$ is open.

  • Wonderful! I have been considering this question for a while. However, would you mind pointing out any reference for the statements: A morphism of schemes which is flat and (locally) of finite presentation is necessarily open. Thank you so much. – Student May 16 '18 at 23:22
  • Here is the Stacks Project reference: https://stacks.math.columbia.edu/tag/01UA. – Keenan Kidwell May 17 '18 at 00:04
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    Maybe simpler: An absolutely flat ring is zero-dimensional so that if it is noetherian it will be artinian. But for an artinian ring $\operatorname {Spec }R $ is finite and discrete so that any subset of $\operatorname {Spec }R $ is open. – Georges Elencwajg May 17 '18 at 11:35
  • Dear @Georges, Indeed, that is simpler. Thank you for the comment! – Keenan Kidwell May 17 '18 at 15:31
  • Dear Keenan, the idea of studying these rings is entirely yours and that's the important point. – Georges Elencwajg May 17 '18 at 16:35
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This answer addresses the question "If $R$ is a commutative ring, is there any criterion for the property that any local section of the structure sheaf on $\text{Spec}(R)$ has open support?" As pointed out by Georges Elencwajg in the comments, if you're interested in the condition that any local section of any sheaf on $\text{Spec}(R)$ has open support, thinking about skyskraper sheaves will quickly show you that this happens if and only if $\text{Spec}(R)$ is finite and discrete.

First let me handle the case of global sections. To any $r\in R$, we can associate the ideal $I_r = \{s\in R\mid rs = 0\}$. If $p$ is a prime ideal, $r_p\neq 0$ if and only if $I_r\subseteq p$. So $\text{supp}(r) = V(I_r)$. Since $\text{supp}(r)$ is always closed, we're interested in the case when $\text{supp}(r)$ is clopen. But every clopen set in $\text{Spec}(R)$ has the form $V(e)$ for a unique idempotent element $e$ (see here). So $\text{supp}(r)$ is clopen if and only if $V(I_r) = V(e)$ if and only if $\sqrt{I_r} = \sqrt{(e)}$ for some idempotent $e$.

Now it's easy to translate this to the following condition. Let's call it $(\star)$:

For all $r$ there exists an idempotent $e$ such that $re = 0$ and for all $s$ such that $rs = 0$, some power of $s$ is a multiple of $e$.

We've shown that all supports of global sections are open if and only if $(\star)$.

It's not hard to check that $(\star)$ is closed under finite products and localization.

Now for local sections: If $s$ is a local section, then we can cover $\text{dom}(s)$ by basic affine opens $\bigcup_{i\in I}\text{Spec}(R_{f_i})$. Let $s_i$ be the global section of $\text{Spec}(R_{f_i})$ corresponding to $s$. Then the support of $s$ is open in $\text{dom}(s)$ if and only if the support of $s_i$ is open in $\text{Spec}(R_{f_i})$ for all $i\in I$. We conclude that all supports of local sections are open if and only if $(\star)$ holds in $R_f$ for every $f\in R$. But since $(\star)$ is closed under localization, we also get:

All supports of local sections are open if and only if $(\star)$.

Of course integral domains satisfy $(\star)$, taking $e = 1$ if $r = 0$ and $e = 0$ otherwise.

More generally, a ring is sometimes called primary if $(0)$ is a primary ideal. Equivalently, if every zero-divisor is nilpotent. Primary rings also satisfy $(\star)$, again taking $e=1$ if $r=0$ and $e=0$ otherwise. In fact, by the above argument you can see that $R$ is primary if and only if every global section $r$ has $\text{supp}(r) = \emptyset$ or $\text{supp}(r) = \text{Spec}(R)$.

So a sufficient condition for $(\star)$ is that $R$ is a finite product of primary rings. The condition in Keenan Kidwell's answer is a special case of this, since his rings have finite discrete $\text{Spec}(R)$, so they are finite products of rings with a unique prime ideal, which are necessarily primary.

Another sufficient condition for $(\star)$ is that $R$ is a Boolean ring, i.e. every element is idempotent (then the support of $r$ is $V(1-r)$, the complement of $V(r)$). This gives new examples, since no infinite Boolean ring is a finite product of primary rings (because primary rings have no idempotents other than $0$ and $1$).

Another way of looking at this is that every idempotent $e$ splits the ring $R$ into a product $R\cong R/(e)\times R/(1-e)$. So $(\star)$ has the following equivalent form: for all $r$ we can represent the ring as a product $R\cong R_1\times R_2$ (either of the factors may be the zero ring!) such that $\pi_2(r) = 0$ and $\pi_1(r) = r'$ has the property that if $r's = 0$, then $s$ is nilpotent in $R_1$. If $R$ is a finite product of primary rings, then this product decomposition will always just be a partition of the factors into two pieces. But in general, the decomposition as a product may depend heavily on the choice of $r$. For example, if $R$ is Boolean, the decomposition as a product is different for every $r$.

Alex Kruckman
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