Locally complete intersection homomorphisms and a conjecture of Quillen on the vanishing of cotangent homology

DOI10.2307/121087MaRDI QIDQ1970464zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Publication date 14 May 2001

Published in Annals of Mathematics. Second Series (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/math/9909192, https://eudml.org/doc/121196, http://www.math.princeton.edu/~annals/issues/1999/150_2.html

zbMATH Keywords

André-Quillen homology completion cotangent complex homomorphisms localization locally complete intersection

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Morphisms of commutative rings (13B10) (Co)homology of commutative rings and algebras (e.g., Hochschild, André-Quillen, cyclic, dihedral, etc.) (13D03) Commutative Noetherian rings and modules (13E05) Special types (Cohen-Macaulay, Gorenstein, Buchsbaum, etc.) (13H10) Local structure of morphisms in algebraic geometry: étale, flat, etc. (14B25) Complete intersections (14M10)

Abstract: Classical definitions of locally complete intersection (l.c.i.) homomorphisms of commutative rings are limited to maps that are essentially of finite type, or flat. The concept introduced in this paper is meaningful for homomorphisms phi : R longrightarrow S of commutative noetherian rings. It is defined in terms of the structure of phi in a formal neighborhood of each point of Spec S. We characterize the l.c.i. property by different conditions on the vanishing of the Andr'e-Quillen homology of the R-algebra S. One of these descriptions establishes a very general form of a conjecture of Quillen that was open even for homomorphisms of finite type: If S has a finite resolution by flat R-modules and the cotangent complex cot SR is quasi-isomorphic to a bounded complex of flat S-modules, then phi is l.c.i. The proof uses a mixture of methods from commutative algebra, differential graded homological algebra, and homotopy theory. The l.c.i. property is shown to be stable under a variety of operations, including composition, decomposition, flat base change, localization, and completion. The present framework allows for the results to be stated in proper generality; many of them are new even with classical assumptions. For instance, the stability of l.c.i. homomorphisms under decomposition settles an open case in Fulton's treatment of orientations of morphisms of schemes.

Review text

The paper begins with the introduction of the notion of locally complete intersection (l.c.i) for homomorphisms of noetherian rings. If \(\varphi:(R,m)\to(S,n)\) is a local homomorphism, then by a previous work of \textit{L. L. Avramov}, \textit{H.-B. Foxby} and \textit{B. Herzog} [J. Algebra 164, No. 1, 124-145 (1994; Zbl 0798.13002)], the composition \(\overline \varphi:R \to\widehat S\) of \(\varphi\) with the completion map \(S\to \widehat{S}\) factors as \(\varphi'\circ \dot\varphi\), \(\dot\varphi :R'\to\widehat S\), \(\varphi': R\to R'\), where \(\dot\varphi\) is flat, \(\varphi'\) is surjective, \(R'\) is complete and the ring \(R'/mR'\) is regular. Then \(\varphi\) is called a complete intersection if \(\text{Ker } \varphi'\) is generated by a regular sequence. A homomorphism of noetherian rings \(\varphi: R\to S\) is l.c.i. if at each prime ideal \(q\) of \(S\) the induced local homomorphism \(\varphi_q: R_{q \cap R}\to S_q\) is a complete intersection. With this definition, L. Avramov establishes a very general form of a conjecture of Quillen: If \(S\) has a finite resolution by flat \(R\)-modules and the cotangent complex \(L(S/R)\) is quasi-isomorphic to a bounded complex of flat \(S\)-modules, then \(\varphi\) is l.c.i. The proof uses an interplay of commutative algebra and differential homological algebra. The family of l.c.i. homomorphisms is shown to be stable under composition, decomposition, flat base extension, localization and completion.

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