In algebraic geometry, a relative effective Cartier divisor is roughly a family of effective Cartier divisors. Precisely, an effective Cartier divisor in a scheme X over a ring R is a closed subscheme D of X that (1) is flat over R and (2) the ideal sheaf I ( D ) {\displaystyle I(D)} of D is locally free of rank one (i.e., invertible sheaf). Equivalently, a closed subscheme D of X is an effective Cartier divisor if there is an open affine cover U i = Spec A i {\displaystyle U_{i}=\operatorname {Spec} A_{i}} of X and nonzerodivisors f i ∈ A i {\displaystyle f_{i}\in A_{i}} such that the intersection D ∩ U i {\displaystyle D\cap U_{i}} is given by the equation f i = 0 {\displaystyle f_{i}=0} (called local equations) and A / f i A {\displaystyle A/f_{i}A} is flat over R and such that they are compatible.
An effective Cartier divisor as the zero-locus of a section of a line bundle Let L be a line bundle on X and s a section of it such that s : O X ↪ L {\displaystyle s:{\mathcal {O}}_{X}\hookrightarrow L} (in other words, s is a O X ( U ) {\displaystyle {\mathcal {O}}_{X}(U)} -regular element for any open subset U.) Choose some open cover { U i } {\displaystyle \{U_{i}\}} of X such that L | U i ≃ O X | U i {\displaystyle L|_{U_{i}}\simeq {\mathcal {O}}_{X}|_{U_{i}}} . For each i, through the isomorphisms, the restriction s | U i {\displaystyle s|_{U_{i}}} corresponds to a nonzerodivisor f i {\displaystyle f_{i}} of O X ( U i ) {\displaystyle {\mathcal {O}}_{X}(U_{i})} . Now, define the closed subscheme { s = 0 } {\displaystyle \{s=0\}} of X (called the zero-locus of the section s) by
{ s = 0 } ∩ U i = { f i = 0 } , {\displaystyle \{s=0\}\cap U_{i}=\{f_{i}=0\},}
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