Algebraic geometry

This Togliatti surface is an algebraic surface of degree five.

Algebraic geometry is a branch of mathematics which combines techniques of abstract algebra, especially commutative algebra, with the language and the problems of geometry. It occupies a central place in modern mathematics and has multiple conceptual connections with such diverse fields as complex analysis, topology and number theory. Initially a study of systems of polynomial equations in several variables, the subject of algebraic geometry starts where equation solving leaves off, and it becomes even more important to understand the intrinsic properties of the totality of solutions of a system of equations, than to find some solution; this leads into some of the deepest waters in the whole of mathematics, both conceptually and in terms of technique.

The fundamental objects of study in algebraic geometry are algebraic varieties, geometric manifestations of solutions of systems of polynomial equations. Plane algebraic curves, which include lines, circles, parabolas, lemniscates, and Cassini ovals, form one of the best studied classes of algebraic varieties. A point of the plane belongs to an algebraic curve if its coordinates satisfy a given polynomial equation. Basic questions involve relative position of different curves and relations between the curves given by different equations.

Descartes's idea of coordinates is central to algebraic geometry, but it has undergone a series of remarkable transformations beginning in the early 19th century. Before then, the coordinates were assumed to be tuples of real numbers, but this changed when first complex numbers, and then elements of an arbitrary field became acceptable. Homogeneous coordinates of projective geometry offered an extension of the notion of coordinate system in a different direction, and enriched the scope of algebraic geometry. Much of the development of algebraic geometry in the 20th century occurred within an abstract algebraic framework, with increasing emphasis being placed on 'intrinsic' properties of algebraic varieties not dependent on any particular way of embedding the variety in an ambient coordinate space; this parallels developments in topology and complex geometry.

One key distinction between classical projective geometry of 19th century and modern algebraic geometry, in the form given to it by Grothendieck and Serre, is that the former is concerned with the more geometric notion of a point, while the latter emphasizes the more analytic concepts of a regular function and a regular map and extensively draws on sheaf theory. Another important difference lies in the scope of the subject. Grothendieck's idea of scheme provides the language and the tools for geometric treatment of arbitrary commutative rings and, in particular, bridges algebraic geometry with algebraic number theory. Andrew Wiles's celebrated proof of Fermat's last theorem is a vivid testament to the power of this approach. André Weil, Grothendieck, and Deligne also demonstrated that the fundamental ideas of topology of manifolds have deep analogues in algebraic geometry over finite fields.

Zeros of simultaneous polynomials

Sphere and slanted circle

In classical algebraic geometry, the main objects of interest are the vanishing sets of collections of polynomials, meaning the set of all points that simultaneously satisfy one or more polynomial equations. For instance, the two-dimensional sphere in three-dimensional Euclidean space R³ could be defined as the set of all points (x,y,z) with

$x^2+y^2+z^2-1=0.\,$

A "slanted" circle in R³ can be defined as the set of all points (x,y,z) which satisfy the two polynomial equations

$x^2+y^2+z^2-1=0,\,$

$x+y+z=0.\,$

Affine varieties

First we start with a field k. In classical algebraic geometry, this field was always the complex numbers C, but many of the same results are true if we assume only that k is algebraically closed. We consider the affine space of dimension n over k, denoted Aⁿ(k) (or more simply Aⁿ, when k is clear from the context). When one fixes a coordinates system, one may identify Aⁿ(k) with kⁿ. The purpose of not working with kⁿ is to emphasize that one "forgets" the vector space structure that kⁿ carries.

A function f : Aⁿ → A¹ is said to be regular if it can be written as a polynomial, that is, if there is a polynomial p in k[x₁,...,x_n] such that f(t₁,...,t_n) = p(t₁,...,t_n) for every point (t₁,...,t_n) of Aⁿ.

Regular functions on affine n-space are thus exactly the same as polynomials over k in n variables. We will refer to the set of all regular functions on Aⁿ as k[Aⁿ].

We say that a polynomial vanishes at a point if evaluating it at that point gives zero. Let S be a set of polynomials in k[Aⁿ]. The vanishing set of S (or vanishing locus) is the set V(S) of all points in Aⁿ where every polynomial in S vanishes. In other words,

$V(S) = \{(t_1,\dots,t_n)|\forall p\in S, p(t_1,\dots,t_n) = 0\}.\,$

A subset of Aⁿ which is V(S), for some S, is called an algebraic set. The V stands for variety (a specific type of algebraic set to be defined below).

Given a subset U of Aⁿ, can one recover the set of polynomials which generate it? If U is any subset of Aⁿ, define I(U) to be the set of all polynomials whose vanishing set contains U. The I stands for ideal: if two polynomials f and g both vanish on U, then f+g vanishes on U, and if h is any polynomial, then hf vanishes on U, so I(U) is always an ideal of k[Aⁿ].

Two natural questions to ask are:

• Given a subset U of Aⁿ, when is U = V(I(U))?
• Given a set S of polynomials, when is S = I(V(S))?

The answer to the first question is provided by introducing the Zariski topology, a topology on Aⁿ which directly reflects the algebraic structure of k[Aⁿ]. Then U = V(I(U)) if and only if U is a Zariski-closed set. The answer to the second question is given by Hilbert's Nullstellensatz. In one of its forms, it says that I(V(S)) is the prime radical of the ideal generated by S. In more abstract language, there is a Galois connection, giving rise to two closure operators; they can be identified, and naturally play a basic role in the theory; the example is elaborated at Galois connection.

For various reasons we may not always want to work with the entire ideal corresponding to an algebraic set U. Hilbert's basis theorem implies that ideals in k[Aⁿ] are always finitely generated.

An algebraic set is called irreducible if it cannot be written as the union of two smaller algebraic sets. An irreducible algebraic set is also called a variety. It turns out that an algebraic set is a variety if and only if the polynomials defining it generate a prime ideal of the polynomial ring.

Regular functions

Just as continuous functions are the natural maps on topological spaces and smooth functions are the natural maps on differentiable manifolds, there is a natural class of functions on an algebraic set, called regular functions. A regular function on an algebraic set V contained in Aⁿ is defined to be the restriction of a regular function on Aⁿ, in the sense we defined above.

It may seem unnaturally restrictive to require that a regular function always extend to the ambient space, but it is very similar to the situation in a normal topological space, where the Tietze extension theorem guarantees that a continuous function on a closed subset always extends to the ambient topological space.

Just as with the regular functions on affine space, the regular functions on V form a ring, which we denote by k[V]. This ring is called the coordinate ring of V.

Since regular functions on V come from regular functions on Aⁿ, there should be a relationship between their coordinate rings. Specifically, to get a function in k[V] we took a function in k[Aⁿ], and we said that it was the same as another function if they gave the same values when evaluated on V. This is the same as saying that their difference is zero on V. From this we can see that k[V] is the quotient k[Aⁿ]/I(V).

The category of affine varieties

Using regular functions from an affine variety to A¹, we can define regular functions from one affine variety to another. First we will define a regular function from a variety into affine space: Let V be a variety contained in Aⁿ. Choose m regular functions on V, and call them f₁, ..., f_m. We define a regular function f from V to A^m by letting f(t₁, ..., t_n) = (f₁, ..., f_m). In other words, each f_i determines one coordinate of the range of f.

If V' is a variety contained in A^m, we say that f is a regular function from V to V' if the range of f is contained in V'.

This makes the collection of all affine varieties into a category, where the objects are affine varieties and the morphisms are regular maps. The following theorem characterizes the category of affine varieties:

The category of affine varieties is the opposite category to the category of finitely generated integral k-algebras and their homomorphisms.

Projective space

Main article: Algebraic geometry of projective spaces

parabola (y = x², red) and cubic (y = x³, blue) in projective space

Consider the variety V(y − x²). If we draw it, we get a parabola. As x increases, the slope of the line from the origin to the point (x, x²) becomes larger and larger. As x decreases, the slope of the same line becomes smaller and smaller.

Compare this to the variety V(y − x³). This is a cubic equation. As x increases, the slope of the line from the origin to the point (x, x³) becomes larger and larger just as before. But unlike before, as x decreases, the slope of the same line again becomes larger and larger. So the behavior "at infinity" of V(y − x³) is different from the behavior "at infinity" of V(y − x²). It is, however, difficult to make the concept of "at infinity" meaningful, if we restrict to working in affine space.

The remedy to this is to work in projective space. Projective space has properties analogous to those of a compact Hausdorff space. Among other things, it lets us make precise the notion of "at infinity" by including extra points. The behavior of a variety at those extra points then gives us more information about it. As it turns out, V(y − x³) has a singularity at one of those extra points, but V(y − x²) is smooth.

While projective geometry was originally established on a synthetic foundation, the use of homogeneous coordinates allowed the introduction of algebraic techniques. Furthermore, the introduction of projective techniques made many theorems in algebraic geometry simpler and sharper: For example, Bézout's theorem on the number of intersection points between two varieties can be stated in its sharpest form only in projective space. For this reason, projective space plays a fundamental role in algebraic geometry.

The modern viewpoint

The modern approaches to algebraic geometry redefine and effectively extend the range of basic objects in various levels of generality to schemes, formal schemes, ind-schemes, algebraic spaces, algebraic stacks and so on. The need for this arises already from the useful ideas within theory of varieties, e.g. the formal functions of Zariski can be accommodated by introducing nilpotent elements in structure rings; considering spaces of loops and arcs, constructing quotients by group actions and developing formal grounds for natural intersection theory and deformation theory lead to some of the further extensions.

Most remarkably, in late 1950s, algebraic varieties were subsumed into Alexander Grothendieck's concept of a scheme. Their local objects are affine schemes or prime spectra which are locally ringed spaces which form a category which is antiequivalent to the category of commutative unital rings, extending the duality between the category of affine algebraic varieties over a field k, and the category of finitely generated reduced k-algebras. The gluing is along Zariski topology; one can glue within the category of locally ringed spaces, but also, using the Yoneda embedding, within the more abstract category of presheaves of sets over the category of affine schemes. The Zariski topology in the set theoretic sense is then replaced by a Zariski topology in the sense of Grothendieck topology. Grothendieck introduced Grothendieck topologies having in mind more exotic but geometrically finer and more sensitive examples than the crude Zariski topology, namely the étale topology, and the two flat Grothendieck topologies: ffpf and fpqc; nowadays some other examples became prominent including Nisnevich topology. Sheaves can be furthermore generalized to stacks in the sense of Grothendieck, usually with some additional representability conditions leading to Artin stacks and, even finer, Deligne-Mumford stacks, both often called algebraic stacks.

Sometimes other algebraic sites replace the category of affine schemes. For example, Nikolai Durov has introduced commutative algebraic monads as a generalization of local objects in a generalized algebraic geometry. Versions of a tropical geometry, of an absolute geometry over a field of one element and an algebraic analogue of Arakelov's geometry were realized in this setup.^{[non-primary source needed]}

Another formal generalization is possible to Universal algebraic geometry in which every variety of algebra has its own algebraic geometry. The term variety of algebra should not be confused with algebraic variety.

The language of schemes, stacks and generalizations has proved to be a valuable way of dealing with geometric concepts and became cornerstones of modern algebraic geometry.

Algebraic stacks can be further generalized and for many practical questions like deformation theory and intersection theory, this is often the most natural approach. One can extend the Grothendieck site of affine schemes to a higher categorical site of derived affine schemes, by replacing the commutative rings with an infinity category of differential graded commutative algebras, or of simplicial commutative rings or a similar category with an appropriate variant of a Grothendieck topology. One can also replace presheaves of sets by presheaves of simplicial sets (or of infinity groupoids). Then, in presence of an appropriate homotopic machinery one can develop a notion of derived stack as such a presheaf on the infinity category of derived affine schemes, which is satifsying certain infinite categorical version of a sheaf axiom (and to be algebraic, inductively a sequence of representability conditions). Quillen model categories, Segal categories and quasicategories are some of the most often used tools to formalize this yielding the derived algebraic geometry, introduced by the school of Carlos Simpson, including Andre Hirschowitz, Bertrand Toën, Gabrielle Vezzosi, Michel Vaquié and others; and developed further by Jacob Lurie, Bertrand Toën, and Gabrielle Vezzosi. Another (noncommutative) version of derived algebraic geometry, using A-infinity categories has been developed from early 1990-s by Maxim Kontsevich and followers.

History

Prehistory: Before the 19th century

Some of the roots of algebraic geometry date back to the work of the Hellenistic Greeks from the 5th century BC. The Delian problem, for instance, was to construct a length x so that the cube of side x contained the same volume as the rectangular box a²b for given sides a and b. Menechmus (circa 350 BC) considered the problem geometrically by intersecting the pair of plane conics ay = x² and xy = ab.^[1] The later work, in the 3rd century BC, of Archimedes and Apollonius studied more systematically problems on conic sections,^[2] and also involved the use of coordinates.^[1] The Arab mathematicians were able to solve by purely algebraic means certain cubic equations, and then to interpret the results geometrically. This was done, for instance, by Ibn al-Haytham in the 10th century AD.^[3] Subsequently, Persian mathematician Omar Khayyám (born 1048 A.D.) discovered the general method of solving cubic equations by intersecting a parabola with a circle.^[4] Each of these early developments in algebraic geometry dealt with questions of finding and describing the intersections of algebraic curves.

Such techniques of applying geometrical constructions to algebraic problems were also adopted by a number of Renaissance mathematicians such as Gerolamo Cardano and Niccolò Fontana "Tartaglia" on their studies of the cubic equation. The geometrical approach to construction problems, rather than the algebraic one, was favored by most 16th and 17th century mathematicians, notably Blaise Pascal who argued against the use of algebraic and analytical methods in geometry.^[5] The French mathematicians Franciscus Vieta and later René Descartes and Pierre de Fermat revolutionized the conventional way of thinking about construction problems through the introduction of coordinate geometry. They were interested primarily in the properties of algebraic curves, such as those defined by Diophantine equations (in the case of Fermat), and the algebraic reformulation of the classical Greek works on conics and cubics (in the case of Descartes).

During the same period, Blaise Pascal and Gérard Desargues approached geometry from a different perspective, developing the synthetic notions of projective geometry. Pascal and Desargues also studied curves, but from the purely geometrical point of view: the analog of the Greek ruler and compass construction. Ultimately, the analytic geometry of Descartes and Fermat won out, for it supplied the 18th century mathematicians with concrete quantitative tools needed to study physical problems using the new calculus of Newton and Leibniz. However, by the end of the 18th century, most of the algebraic character of coordinate geometry was subsumed by the calculus of infinitesimals of Lagrange and Euler.

Nineteenth and early 20th century

It took the simultaneous 19th century developments of non-Euclidean geometry and Abelian integrals in order to bring the old algebraic ideas back into the geometrical fold. The first of these new developments was seized up by Edmond Laguerre and Arthur Cayley, who attempted to ascertain the generalized metric properties of projective space. Cayley introduced the idea of homogeneous polynomial forms, and more specifically quadratic forms, on projective space. Subsequently, Felix Klein studied projective geometry (along with other sorts of geometry) from the viewpoint that the geometry on a space is encoded in a certain class of transformations on the space. By the end of the 19th century, projective geometers were studying more general kinds of transformations on figures in projective space. Rather than the projective linear transformations which were normally regarded as giving the fundamental Kleinian geometry on projective space, they concerned themselves also with the higher degree birational transformations. This weaker notion of congruence would later lead members of the 20th century Italian school of algebraic geometry to classify algebraic surfaces up to birational isomorphism.

The second early 19th century development, that of Abelian integrals, would lead Bernhard Riemann to the development of Riemann surfaces.

Twentieth century

B. L. van der Waerden, Oscar Zariski, André Weil and others attempted to develop a rigorous foundation for algebraic geometry based on contemporary commutative algebra, including valuation theory and the theory of ideals.

In the 1950s and 1960s Jean-Pierre Serre and Alexander Grothendieck recast the foundations making use of sheaf theory. Later, from about 1960, and largely spearheaded by Grothendieck, the idea of schemes was worked out, in conjunction with a very refined apparatus of homological techniques. After a decade of rapid development the field stabilized in the 1970s, and new applications were made, both to number theory and to more classical geometric questions on algebraic varieties, singularities and moduli.

An important class of varieties, not easily understood directly from their defining equations, are the abelian varieties, which are the projective varieties whose points form an abelian group. The prototypical examples are the elliptic curves, which have a rich theory. They were instrumental in the proof of Fermat's last theorem and are also used in elliptic curve cryptography.

While much of algebraic geometry is concerned with abstract and general statements about varieties, methods for effective computation with concretely-given polynomials have also been developed. The most important is the technique of Gröbner bases which is employed in all computer algebra systems. Based on these methods, several solvers may compute all the solutions of a system of polynomial equations whose associated variety has dimension zero and thus consists in a finite number of points.

Applications

Algebraic geometry now finds application in statistics,^[6] control theory,^[7] robotics,^[8] error-correcting codes,^[9] phylogenetics^[10] and geometric modelling.^[11] There are also connections to string theory,^[12] game theory,^[13] graph matchings,^[14] solitons^[15] and integer programming.^[16] Google Scholar lists hundreds of more studies on algebraic geometry in biology, chemistry, economics, physics and of course other areas of mathematics.

See also

• Algebraic statistics
• Differential geometry
• Geometric algebra
• Intersection theory
• Important publications in algebraic geometry
• List of algebraic surfaces
• Noncommutative algebraic geometry
• Differential algebraic geometry
• Real algebraic geometry

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} Dieudonné, Jean (1972). "The historical development of algebraic geometry". The American Mathematical Monthly 79 (8): 827–866. doi:10.2307/2317664. JSTOR 2317664. 
2. ^ Kline, M. (1972) Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (Volume 1). Oxford University Press. pp. 108, 90.
3. ^ Kline, M. (1972) Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (Volume 1). Oxford University Press. p. 193.
4. ^ Kline, M. (1972) Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (Volume 1). Oxford University Press. pp. 193–195.
5. ^ Kline, M. (1972) Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (Volume 1). Oxford University Press. p. 279.
6. ^ Mathias Drton, Bernd Sturmfels, Seth Sullivant (2009), Lectures on Algebraic Statistics Springer, ISBN 9783764389048
7. ^ Peter L. Falb (1990), Methods of algebraic geometry in control theory, Birkhäuser, ISBN 9783764334543
8. ^ J. M. Selig (205), Geometric fundamentals of robotics, Springer, ISBN 9780387208749
9. ^ Michael A. Tsfasman, Serge G. Vlăduț, Dmitry Nogin (2007), Algebraic geometric codes: basic notions, AMS Bookstore, ISBN 9780821843062
10. ^ Barry A. Cipra (2007), Algebraic Geometers See Ideal Approach to Biology, SIAM News, Volume 40, Number 6
11. ^ Bert Jüttler, Ragni Piene (2007) Geometric modeling and algebraic geometry, Springer, ISBN 9783540721840
12. ^ David A. Cox, Sheldon Katz (1999) Mirror symmetry and algebraic geometry, AMS Bookstore, ISBN 9780821821275
13. ^ The algebraic geometry of perfect and sequential equilibrium, LE Blume, WR Zame - Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society, 1994 - jstor.org
14. ^ Richard Kenyon; Andrei Okounkov; Scott Sheffield (2003). "Dimers and Amoebae". arXiv:math-ph/0311005 [math-ph]. 
15. ^ IM Krichever and PG Grinevich, Algebraic geometry methods in soliton theory, Chapter 14 of Soliton theory, Allan P. Fordy, Manchester University Press ND, 1990, ISBN 9780719014918
16. ^ David A. Cox, Bernd Sturmfels, Dinesh N. Manocha (1997 Applications of computational algebraic geometry, AMS Bookstore, ISBN 9780821807507

References

A classical textbook, predating schemes:

• W. V. D. Hodge; Daniel Pedoe (1994). Methods of Algebraic Geometry: Volume 1. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-46900-7. Zbl 0796.14001. 
• W. V. D. Hodge; Daniel Pedoe (1994). Methods of Algebraic Geometry: Volume 2. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-46901-5. Zbl 0796.14002. 
• W. V. D. Hodge; Daniel Pedoe (1994). Methods of Algebraic Geometry: Volume 3. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-46775-6. Zbl 0796.14003. 

Modern textbooks that do not use the language of schemes:

• David A. Cox; John Little, Donal O'Shea (1997). Ideals, Varieties, and Algorithms (second ed.). Springer-Verlag. ISBN 0-387-94680-2. Zbl 0861.13012. 
• Phillip Griffiths; Joe Harris (1994). Principles of Algebraic Geometry. Wiley-Interscience. ISBN 0-471-05059-8. Zbl 0836.14001. 
• Joe Harris (1995). Algebraic Geometry: A First Course. Springer-Verlag. ISBN 0-387-97716-3. Zbl 0779.14001. 
• David Mumford (1995). Algebraic Geometry I: Complex Projective Varieties (2nd ed.). Springer-Verlag. ISBN 3-540-58657-1. Zbl 0821.14001. 
• Miles Reid (1988). Undergraduate Algebraic Geometry. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-35662-8. Zbl 0701.14001. 
• Igor Shafarevich (1995). Basic Algebraic Geometry I: Varieties in Projective Space (2nd ed.). Springer-Verlag. ISBN 0-387-54812-2. Zbl 0797.14001. 

Textbooks and references for schemes:

• David Eisenbud; Joe Harris (1998). The Geometry of Schemes. Springer-Verlag. ISBN 0-387-98637-5. Zbl 0960.14002. 
• Alexander Grothendieck (1960). Éléments de géométrie algébrique. Publications Mathématiques de l'IHÉS. Zbl 0118.36206. 
• Alexander Grothendieck (1971). Éléments de géométrie algébrique. 1 (2nd ed.). Springer-Verlag. ISBN 3-540-05113-9. Zbl 0203.23301. 
• Robin Hartshorne (1977). Algebraic Geometry. Springer-Verlag. ISBN 0-387-90244-9. Zbl 0367.14001. 
• David Mumford (1999). The Red Book of Varieties and Schemes: Includes the Michigan Lectures (1974) on Curves and Their Jacobians (2nd ed.). Springer-Verlag. ISBN 3-540-63293-X. Zbl 0945.14001. 

• Igor Shafarevich (1995). Basic Algebraic Geometry II: Schemes and complex manifolds. (2nd ed.). Springer-Verlag. ISBN 3-540-57554-5. Zbl 0797.14002. 

On the Internet:

• Kevin R. Coombes: Algebraic Geometry: A Total Hypertext Online System. In construction; currently of very limited use for self study.
• Algebraic geometry entry on PlanetMath
• Algebraic Equations and Systems of Algebraic Equations at EqWorld: The World of Mathematical Equations