Why are the noetherian objects in a category of quasicoherent sheaves just the coherent ones

abelian-categoriesalgebraic-geometrycoherent-sheavesquasicoherent-sheavesschemes

The question says it all really. Let $X$ be a noetherian scheme. Let $\mathcal{A}$ be the category of quasicoherent sheaves on $X$. I want to show that an object $\mathcal{F}$ in $\mathcal{A}$ is noetherian if and only if it is coherent. By noetherian here I mean that it satisfies the ascending chain condition on subsheaves.

The direction coherent $\Rightarrow$ noetherian is easy. You just check that any ascending chain becomes constant on stalks by reducing the problem to one of commutative algebra.

My problem is with the other direction. Suppose $\mathcal{F}$ is noetherian. Let $U = \text{Spec }A$ be a affine open set. I want to show that $\mathcal{F}(U)$ is a finitely generated $A$-module, or equivalently that it is a noetherian $A$-module. My problem is that it's not immediate that just because an ascending chain much become constant globally that it must also become constant on $U$. I suspect this has something to do with the fact that you can extend coherent sheaves, but can anyone spell out how I'd prove this?

Best Answer

It suffices to show that if $\mathcal{F}$ is a noetherian quasicoherent sheaf on $X$ then $\mathcal{F}|_U$ is a noetherian quasicoherent sheaf on $U$, since the equivalence of categories between quasicoherent sheaves on $U$ and $A$-modules then gives that $\mathcal{F}(U)$ is a noetherian $A$-module.

So, we prove that $\mathcal{F}|_U$ is noetherian in the category of quasicoherent sheaves on $U$. Let $i:U\to X$ be the inclusion morphism. There is a canonical morphism $\alpha:\mathcal{F}\to i_*(\mathcal{F}|_U)$ which is an isomorphism when restricted to $U$. Given a quasicoherent subsheaf $\mathcal{G}\subseteq\mathcal{F}|_U$, we can consider the quasicoherent subsheaf $\alpha^{-1}(i_*\mathcal{G})\subseteq\mathcal{F}$. It is clear that the correspondence $\mathcal{G}\mapsto \alpha^{-1}(i_*\mathcal{G})$ preserves the inclusion relation between subsheaves of $\mathcal{F}|_U$. Moreover, it preserves strict inclusions, since $\mathcal{G}$ can be recovered as the restriction of $\alpha^{-1}(i_*\mathcal{G})$ to $U$ (since $\alpha$ is an isomorphism on $U$). Thus any strictly ascending chain of quasicoherent subsheaves of $\mathcal{F}|_U$ can be turned into a strictly ascending chain of quasicoherent subsheaves of $\mathcal{F}$ by this construction. Since $\mathcal{F}$ is noetherian, no such chain can exist, so $\mathcal{F}|_U$ is noetherian.

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