On the non-vanishing of cotangent cohomology (Q1092125)

Rings are commutative and noetherian. The ring homomorphism \(f: R\to S\) is called smooth if it is flat with geometrically regular fibres. More generally, f is called smoothable if it can be factored \(R\to^{g}Q\to^{h}S\) with g smooth and h surjective. \({\mathbb{L}}_{S| R}\) is the cotangent complex associated to \(f: R\to S\) and \(T^ i(S| R,M)=H^ iHom_ S({\mathbb{L}}_{S| R},M)\). There is a vanishing theorem due to Grothendieck, Lichtenbaum-Schlessinger, André, Quillen: \((1)\quad f\quad is\) smooth \(\Leftrightarrow\) \(pd_ S{\mathbb{L}}_{S| R}<1\Leftrightarrow T^ 1(S| R,-)=0\). - For a smoothable \(f: (2)\quad f\quad is\) locally a complete intersection (l.c.i.) \(\Leftrightarrow\) \(pd_ S{\mathbb{L}}_{S| R}<2\Leftrightarrow T^ 2(S| R,-)=0.\) One main result of this article is the following theorem A: Let \(f: R\to S\) be smoothable with \(fd_ R(S)<\infty\) (flat dimension) and suppose \(Q\subseteq S\). If q is a prime ideal of S, at which f is not l.c.i. then there exists an integer N such that \(T^ i(S| R,S/q)\neq 0\) for \(i>N.\) The problem is reduced to the case of local homomorphisms. In the local case it is shown that (if characteristic 0) \(T^ i(S| R,k)=\pi^{i+1}(F^ f)\), the homotopy fibre of f. Then the needed local results are proved in this setting (without restriction to characteristic 0). As a corollary the authors get new conditions (in terms of the deviations \(e_ i(S)\) of S and of the Lie algebra \(\pi\) (S) of S) for a ring S to be a complete intersection. E.g. they generalize the Tate- Assmus result: \(S\quad is\quad c.i.\Leftrightarrow e_ i(S)=0\quad for\quad i>2\) to \(S\quad is\quad c.i.\Leftrightarrow e_ i(S)=0\) for infinitely many values of i.