I'm looking at Bridgeland's paper "Flops and Derived categories" and I got confused on what he meant by a family of ideal sheaves.
Let $Y$ be a scheme, and let $S$ be another scheme. A family of sheaves $\mathcal E_Y$ on $Y$ over $S$ is a sheaf on $S\times Y$, flat over $S$. Two such families are equivalent if they differ by tensoring by pullback of a line bundle on $S$.
When we talk about ideal sheaves $\mathcal{I}$ of $Y$, usually an inclusion to the structure sheaf $\mathcal{O}_Y$ is taken as part of the data. Now when we talk about a family of ideal sheaves, what do we really mean by that hidden part of the data? At least a family of sheaves which are flat over $S$, but there should be more. More specifically, when we say "let $\mathcal E_Y$ be a family of ideal sheaves on $Y$ over $S$", is there an inclusion of $\mathcal E_Y$ into $\mathcal O_{S\times Y}$ given part of the data?
(EDIT: according to MartinG's answer, this attempt of definition doesn't seem to be right, some functoriality is missing. Now let me replace my question by the following:
What is the functor $M_I(X)$? What's the definition and why is it functorial? (I'm guessing MartinG's suggestion is right, namely rank 1 sheaves with trivial determinant line bundle, but I'm not 100% sure.)
Why does $M_I(X)$ exist as a scheme under that definition? (In the paper he seems need this fact in a crucial way.)
What's the relation between $M_I(X)$ and $\text{Hilb}(X)$?
End of EDIT)
Best Answer
[This is now an answer to the edited question(s), with some details added. My answer to the original question is kept at the very end.]
Firstly: The question is a good one, and it is not easy to find references on this. I had spent too much time pondering about the failure of the double dual argument (see below) before I finally heard the arguement given in the last section below, indirectly from Fantechi, via Faber.
Assume $X$ is smooth projective.
Definition: An $S$-valued point in $M_I(X)$ is an $S$-flat coherent sheaf on $S\times X$, with stable fibres of rank one, and with determinant line bundle isomorphic to $\mathcal{O}_{S\times X}$, modulo isomorphism.
(I do not know if this is what Bridgeland meant, but to me this is resonably standard.)
Comment: Stability for rank one means torsion free.
Existence: Let $M(X)$ be the (Simpson) moduli space for stable rank one sheaves. Then $M_I(X)$ is the fibre over $\mathcal{O}_X$ for the determinant map $M(X) \to \mathrm{Pic}(X)$. This map sends a sheaf $I$ (stable rank one fibres) on $S\times X$ to the determinant line bundle $\det(I)$, and it is trivial as a point in $\mathrm{Pic}(X)$ if it is of the form $p^*L$ with $L\in\mathrm{Pic}(S)$. Then $I\otimes p^*L^{-1}$ is equivalent to $I$ in $M(X)(S)$, and it has trivial determinant. This shows that $M_I(X)$ indeed is a fibre of the determinant map.
Of course the determinant of an ideal $I_Y\subset \mathcal{O}_X$ is nontrivial if $Y$ is a non principal divisor, so you cannot map such ideals to $M_I(X)$. In any case, the ideal of a divisor, without the embedding, would only remember the linear equivalence class.
For brevity, let $\mathrm{Hilb}(X)$ be the part of the Hilbert scheme parametrizing subschemes $Y\subset X$ of codimension at least $2$. Then there is a natural map $F: \mathrm{Hilb}(X) \to M(X)$ that sends an ideal $I_Y\subset\mathcal{O}_{S\times X}$ to $I_Y$, forgetting the embedding. Since $Y$ is flat, so is $I_Y$, and its fibres are torsion free (by flatness again) of rank one. By the codimension assumption, the determinant of $I$ is trivial.
Theorem: $F$ is an isomorphism.
Comment: In the literature one sometimes finds the argument that if $I$ is a rank one torsion free sheaf with trivial determinant, then $I$ embeds into its double dual, which coincides with its determinant $\mathcal{O}_X$. This establishes bijectivity on points. (For Hilbert schemes of points on surfaces this is enough to conclude, since you can check independently that both $\mathrm{Hilb}(X)$ and $M_I(X)$ are smooth, and that the induced map on tangent spaces is an isomorphism.) I do not know how to make sense of this argument in families.
Sketch proof of theorem: The essential point is to show that every $I$ in $M_I(X)(S)$ has a canonical embedding into $\mathcal{O}_{S\times X}$ such that the quotient is $S$-flat.
Let $U\subset S\times X$ be the open subset where $I$ is locally free. Its complement has codimension at least $2$ in all fibres. By the trivial determinant assumption, the restriction of $I$ to $U$ is trivial. By codimension $2$, the trivialization extends to a map $I\to \mathcal{O}_{S\times X}$. This map is injective, in fact injective in all fibres: The restriction to each fibre $\{s\}\times X$ is nonzero (as $U$ intersects all fibres) and hence an embedding ($I$ is torsion free in fibres). It follows that the quotient is flat. There are some details to check, but this is the main point, I think.
[End of new answer, here is the original one:]
If we attempt to define $M_I(X)(S)$ as the set of $S$-flat ideals $I_Z$ in $\mathcal{O}_{S\times X}$, then that would not be functorial in $S$, as the inclusion $I_Z \subset \mathcal{O}_{S\times X}$ may not continue to be injective after base change (in the counter example in the other answer, restriction to the problematic fibre gives the zero map). We could impose "universal injectivity", but that is just another way of requiring the quotient $\mathcal{O}_Z$ to be $S$-flat, so then we have (re)defined the Hilbert scheme.
Another common way of defining moduli of ideals is as the moduli space for rank one stable sheaves (i.e. torsion free) with trivial determinant line bundle. The resulting moduli space is isomorphic to the Hilbert scheme of subschemes of codimension at least 2.