[Math] What are normal schemes intuitively

algebraic-geometryschemes

A ring is called integrally closed if it is an integral domain and is equal to its integral closure in its field of fractions. A scheme is called normal if every stalk is integrally closed.

Some theorems on normality:

  1. A local ring of dimension 1 is normal if and only if it is regular.

  2. (Serre's criterion) A scheme is normal if and only if it is nonsingular in codimension 0 and codimension 1 and every stalk at a generic point of an irreducible closed subset with dimension $\ge 2$ has depth at least 2.

  3. Every rational function on a normal scheme with no poles of codimension 1 is regular.

  4. (Zariski connectedness): If $f:X\rightarrow Y$ is a proper birational map of noetherian integral schemes and $Y$ is normal, then every fiber is connected.

  5. Normal schemes over $C$ are topologically unibranched.

But the proofs I've seen are fairly ad-hoc, and I was wondering if there's some geometric perspective that would clarify these results. The only result here thats an "iff" is Serre's criterion, but I don't understand depth geometrically so I'm not sure how to interpret it.

Is there some nice geometric perspective on normality?

Best Answer

In the world of locally Noetherian schemes, Serre's criterion can be made quite geometric.

Let $X$ be a reduced, locally Noetherian scheme. Then...

  • $X$ is $R_1$ iff the singular locus has codimension at least 2.
  • $X$ is $S_2$ iff, for each $Y\subset X$ of codimension at least $2$, the regular functions on the complement $X-Y$ extend to regular functions on $X$.

This second fact can be found in Ravi Vakil's notes (Theorem 12.3.10), or in this MathOverflow post.

Roughly speaking, normalizing a variety improves singularities as follows.

  • In codimension $1$, it completely resolves them.
  • In codimension $\geq 2$, it improves them enough so that rational functions defined on their complement can be extended to the singularity.
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