Functors of Artin rings

Abstract

Introduction. In the investigation of functors on the category of preschemes, one is led, by Grothendieck [3], to consider the following situation.Let A be a complete noetherian local ring, u, its maximal ideal, and k = A/u.the residue field.(In most applications A is k itself, or a ring of Witt vectors.)Let C be the category of Artin local A-algebras with residue field k.A covariant functor F from C to Sets is called pro-representable if it has the formwhere R is a complete local A-algebra such that R/mn is in C, all n.(m is the maximal ideal in R.)In many cases of interest, F is not pro-representable, but at least one may find an R and a morphism Hom(7?, ■)->■ F of functors such that Hom(.R, A) -> F(A) is surjective for all A in C. If R is chosen suitably "minimal" then R is called a "hull" of F; R is then unique up to noncanonical isomorphism.Theorem 2.11, §2, gives a criterion for F to have a hull, and also a simple criterion for pro-representability which avoids the use of Grothendieck's techniques of nonflat descent [3], in some cases.Grothendieck's program is carried out by Levelt in [4].§3 contains a few geometric applications of these results.To avoid awkward terminology, I have used the word " pro-representable " in a more restrictive sense than Grothendieck [3] has.He considers the category of A-algebras of finite length and allows R to be a projective limit of such rings.The methods of this paper are a simple extension of those used by David Mumford in a proof (unpublished) of the existence of formal moduli for polarized Abelian varieties.I am indebted to Mumford and to John Täte for many valuable suggestions.1.The category CA.Let A be a complete noetherian local ring, with maximal ideal u. and residue field k = A/u.. We define C= CA to be the category of Artinian local A-algebras having residue field k. (That is, the "structure morphism" A -> ,4 of such a ring A induces a trivial extension of residue fields.)Morphisms in C are local homomorphisms of A-algebras.

Locations

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