Projective variety

In algebraic geometry, a projective variety is an algebraic variety that is a closed subvariety of a projective space. That is, it is the zero-locus in ${\displaystyle \mathbb {P} ^{n}}$ of some finite family of homogeneous polynomials that generate a prime ideal, the defining ideal of the variety.

A projective variety is a projective curve if its dimension is one; it is a projective surface if its dimension is two; it is a projective hypersurface if its dimension is one less than the dimension of the containing projective space; in this case it is the set of zeros of a single homogeneous polynomial.

If X is a projective variety defined by a homogeneous prime ideal I, then the quotient ring

${\displaystyle k[x_{0},\ldots ,x_{n}]/I}$

is called the homogeneous coordinate ring of X. Basic invariants of X such as the degree and the dimension can be read off the Hilbert polynomial of this graded ring.

Projective varieties arise in many ways. They are complete, which roughly can be expressed by saying that there are no points "missing". The converse is not true in general, but Chow's lemma describes the close relation of these two notions. Showing that a variety is projective is done by studying line bundles or divisors on X.

A salient feature of projective varieties are the finiteness constraints on sheaf cohomology. For smooth projective varieties, Serre duality can be viewed as an analog of Poincaré duality. It also leads to the Riemann–Roch theorem for projective curves, i.e., projective varieties of dimension 1. The theory of projective curves is particularly rich, including a classification by the genus of the curve. The classification program for higher-dimensional projective varieties naturally leads to the construction of moduli of projective varieties.^[1] Hilbert schemes parametrize closed subschemes of ${\displaystyle \mathbb {P} ^{n}}$ with prescribed Hilbert polynomial. Hilbert schemes, of which Grassmannians are special cases, are also projective schemes in their own right. Geometric invariant theory offers another approach. The classical approaches include the Teichmüller space and Chow varieties.

A particularly rich theory, reaching back to the classics, is available for complex projective varieties, i.e., when the polynomials defining X have complex coefficients. Broadly, the GAGA principle says that the geometry of projective complex analytic spaces (or manifolds) is equivalent to the geometry of projective complex varieties. For example, the theory of holomorphic vector bundles (more generally coherent analytic sheaves) on X coincide with that of algebraic vector bundles. Chow's theorem says that a subset of projective space is the zero-locus of a family of holomorphic functions if and only if it is the zero-locus of homogeneous polynomials. The combination of analytic and algebraic methods for complex projective varieties lead to areas such as Hodge theory.