Localization of ringed spaces (Q2881313)

This well written, and very informative paper is concerned with the subtle differences between ringed spaces (RS) and locally ringed spaces (LRS). The guiding example is the construction of the fibered product. The fibered product in RS has a simple construction as topological product endowed with a tensored product as structure sheaf. The construction in LRS is much more subtle as the tensored product of local rings is not necessarily local.NEWLINENEWLINEThe author observes that the fibered product in LRS can be constructed form the fibered product in RS using a very general locallization construction. This construction takes as input a primed ringed space (PRS), i.e. ringed space \((X,\mathcal O_X)\) together with the datum of a set of prime ideals \(M_x\) in the local ring \(\mathcal O_{X,x}\) for each point \(x \in X\), and gives back a locally ringed space \((Y,\mathcal O_Y)\) together with a canonical map \(Y \rightarrow X\) of ringed spaces, which satisfies a universal property.NEWLINENEWLINEIn this way one obtains a functor \((PRS) \rightarrow (LRS)\) which is right adjoint to the canonical functor \((LRS) \rightarrow (PRS), X \mapsto (X,\{\mathfrak m_x\})\), where \(\mathfrak m_x\) is the maximal ideal of \(\mathcal O_{X,x}\). This intermediate construction sheds new light on the Spec functor and the construction of inverse limits in LRS and Schemes. Among the new results is a relative Spec functor for non-quasi-coherent sheaves of algebras, which is similar in spirit to Hakim's spectrum for ringed topoi.NEWLINENEWLINEThe original motivation comes from a comparison of quotients of, say, a scheme by a finite etale groupoid \(X/G\), taken in sheaves over the etale site or locally ringed spaces. This application is only touched upon at the beginning, and it would be very interesting to hear more about that.