Morphism of schemes

In algebraic geometry, a morphism of schemes generalizes a morphism of algebraic varieties just as a scheme generalizes an algebraic variety. It is, by definition, a morphism in the category of schemes. A morphism of algebraic stacks generalizes a morphism of schemes. By definition, a morphism of schemes is just a morphism of locally ringed spaces. A scheme, by definition, has open affine charts and thus a morphism of schemes can also be described in terms of such charts (compare the definition of morphism of varieties). Let ƒ:X→Y be a morphism of schemes. If x is a point of X, since ƒ is continuous, there are open affine subsets U = Spec A of X containing x and V = Spec B of Y such that ƒ(U) ⊆ V. Then ƒ: U → V is a morphism of affine schemes and thus is induced by some ring homomorphism B → A (cf. #Affine case.) In fact, one can use this description to "define" a morphism of schemes; one says that ƒ:X→Y is a morphism of schemes if it is locally induced by ring homomorphisms between coordinate rings of affine charts. Note: It would not be desirable to define a morphism of schemes as a morphism of ringed spaces. One trivial reason is that there is an example of a ringed-space morphism between affine schemes that is not induced by a ring homomorphism (for example, a morphism of ringed spaces: that sends the unique point to s and that comes with .) More conceptually, the definition of a morphism of schemes needs to capture "Zariski-local nature" or localization of rings; this point of view (i.e., a local-ringed space) is essential for a generalization (topos). Let f : X → Y be a morphism of schemes with . Then, for each point x of X, the homomorphisms on the stalks: is a local ring homomorphism: i.e., and so induces an injective homomorphism of residue fields (In fact, φ maps th n-th power of a maximal ideal to the n-th power of the maximal ideal and thus induces the map between the (Zariski) cotangent spaces.) For each scheme X, there is a natural morphism which is an isomorphism if and only if X is affine; θ is obtained by gluing U → target which come from restrictions to open affine subsets U of X.