Algebraic Geometry – Irreducible Closed Subsets of a Scheme Correspond to Points

algebraic-geometrycommutative-algebraschemes

I have posted an answer here for the case of an affine scheme, but I got stuck when I tried to generalize the argument to schemes.

My thoughts

Consider a point $p$ in the scheme, its closure in the scheme is an irreducible closed subset. This gives us one direction of the correspondence.

Let $C$ be an irreducible closed subset of the scheme, pick an affine neighborhood $U$ that intersects nontrivially with $C$. Then the intersection is a closed subset of $U$ which decomposes into finite union of irreducible closed subsets of $U$ by Noetherian property of $U$. This is where I got stuck, and don't know how to proceed from here.

Best Answer

Hint: First the closure of a point is always irreducible, there's no need to pass through an affine neighborhood for that.

For the other direction if $C$ is an irreducible closed set and $U$ is open then show that $C \cap U$ is an irreducible closed subset of $U$.

Now $U \cap Z$ has a unique generic point when $U$ is affine. Show that if $V$ is also affine and $V \cap Z$ is nonempty then the generic point of $U \cap Z$ lies in $V$ and hence equals the unique generic point of $V \cap Z$.

Finally use the fact that affine opens form a base for the topology to show that the common generic point for all nonempty $U \cap Z$ is a generic point for $Z$, necessarily a unique one.

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