Étale twists in noncommutative algebraic geometry and the twisted Brauer space (Q528836): Difference between revisions

The paper studies étale twists of derived categories and associative algebras. It provides a construction of a sheaf of spaces on the étale site of an affine scheme, called the twisted Brauer space, which classifies such twists. More precisely, given a commutative ring (or \(E_{\infty}\)-ring spectra) \(R\) and an associative algebra (or \(A_{\infty}\)-ring) \(A\) over \(R\), the author construct a sheaf of spaces on the étale site of \(R\), denoted \(Br^{A}\) whose connected components of its \(R\)-points solve the following classification problem: find \(R\)-algebras \(B\) which are étale locally derived Morita equivalent to \(A\) up to derived Morita equivalences. The author then gives a complete computation of the homotopy sheaves associated to \(Br^{A}\) in terms of the Hochschild cohomology of \(A\) and provides, as an application, a very nice classification of such twisted forms for genus 0 curves, quadrics, and non-commutative projective spaces and a partial classification for for curves of higher genus. The problem of classifying twists (or otherwise called twisted forms) of an algebraic or geometric object has been subject of investigation by many authors, in a more classical setting (for instance by Bondal, Bridgeland, Huybrechts, Kawamata, Orlov, Stellari, van den Bergh) or derived (Keller, Toën, Schwede and Shipley). The notion of a twisted form comes from classical algebraic geometry and it has been studied for its relations with the Brauer group of a scheme. Namely, fixed a base scheme \(X\) and an object (say a scheme, a locally free sheaf of modules, an algebra, a group scheme,\dots) \(Y\) over \(X\), an étale twisted form of \(Y\) is an object \(Z\) over \(X\), of the same type of \(Y\), such that its pullback to an étale over of \(X\) is isomorphic to the pullback of \(Y\). For instance, the Brauer group of a scheme \(X\) can be described in terms of étale twisted forms of the sheaf of \(\mathcal{O}_X\)-algebras \(M_n(\mathcal{O}_X)\). A main reference for the study of twisted forms on the étale site, is the book of \textit{J. S. Milne} [Étale cohomology. Princeton Mathematical Series. 33. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. (1980; Zbl 0433.14012)] on étale cohomology. It this book is shown that étale twisted forms of an object \(Y\) over \(X\) are classified by the first étale cohomology groups of \(X\) with coefficients in the sheaf of automorphisms of \(Y\) (in the category in which \(Y\) belongs). When applied to \(X=\mathrm{Spec}(k)\) for some field \(k\) this result relates the twisted forms of an object over \(k\) with the Galois cohomology of a Galois extension of \(k\) with coefficients in \(\mathrm{Aut}(Y)\). The proofs presented appear to be correct and the results provide a very general and complete classification of twisted forms. It would be interesting to understand the relations of the main result of this paper with the results presented in [\textit{P. Etingof} and \textit{S. Gelaki}, Int. Math. Res. Not. 2012, No. 13, 3040--3063 (2012; Zbl 1246.18003)] in which is shown that a classification problem of forms of linear semisimple abelian categories over a field \(k\) can be expressed in terms of a non-abelian version of Galois cohomology.