# When does the sheaf direct image functor f_* have a right adjoint?

Say f: X → Y is a morphism of schemes. The sheaf direct image functor f always has a left adjoint, namely the sheaf inverse image functor f (with tensoring).

Under what (sufficient) conditions do we know that f has a right adjoint? What is it?

Answer to a related question (edit): If f preserves quasicoherence, then its restriction to quasicoherents f: QCoh(X) → QCoh(Y) has a right adjoint when f is affine (in particular, any closed immersion or finite morphism will do). The basic idea is to globalize the affine case (see Eric Wofsey's answer below); thanks to Pablo Solis for pointing me to page 6 of Ravi Vakil's notes explaining this.

In this question, I'm not restricting to the quasi-coherent categories. One reason for working with non-quasicoherents is that j! , the "extension by zero" right adjoint to j for an open immersion j, doesn't take qcoh to qcoh.

-

If f_* has a right adjoint, it must preserve colimits and hence be right-exact. Thus a necessary condition is that the higher derived functors vanish. In particular, when everything is affine and we have X=Spec B, Y=Spec A, then I believe the adjoint exists and is given by M \mapsto Hom_A(B,M).

-
Are you sure about the affine case even when the modules aren't quasi-coherent? I know the corresponding result for A-modules is true, but a non-quasicoherent O_A-Module (sheaf on Spec A) won't be the "tilde" of any A-module... –  Andrew Critch Oct 28 '09 at 2:07
Oh, I was assuming we were in the category of quasicoherent sheaves. –  Eric Wofsey Oct 28 '09 at 2:56

Provided that X is quasi-compact and separated and f is separated then what is true is that Rf_* : D(X) -> D(Y) has a right adjoint f^! where these are the unbounded derived categories of sheaves of modules with quasicoherent cohomology. This is the Grothendieck duality functor. Its existence can be viewed as a consequence of the fact that Rf_* in such a situation preserves coproducts. It is worth mentioning I guess that sometimes one does not need such big derived categories to produce an adjoint (for instance if X and Y are smooth and projective over some field).

One gets a right adjoint on the level of abelian categories of all sheaves of modules corresponding to the inclusion of a closed subscheme as well namely the inverse image of the subsheaf with supports.

There is the obvious cheat that if f:X -> Y is an isomorphism then the adjoint pair you know gives an equivalence so that f^* is also right adjoint to f_*.

-
Are you saying "f is a closed immersion" is a sufficient condition? –  Andrew Critch Oct 28 '09 at 2:11
Yes, I believe that is all one needs and then one can take the open complement and get a six functor diagram (I hope there is not some hypothesis I am forgetting). This is discussed in Artin's book on Grothendieck Topologies I believe. –  Greg Stevenson Oct 28 '09 at 2:25
Really? I believe it if you restrict attention to the qcoh categories (in fact all you need then is for f to be affine), but for the larger categories I'm unconvinced... I also couldn't find Artin's book :( –  Andrew Critch Oct 29 '09 at 5:12
Really... it works in the generality of sheaves of modules on ringed spaces and sheaves of abelian groups on topological spaces. See for instance Dan Murfet's notes therisingsea.org/notes/RingedSpaceModules.pdf the relevant bit is Proposition 97 on page 38 for the sheaves of modules. –  Greg Stevenson Oct 29 '09 at 6:17

We sometimes (when !!??) have a second adjoint pair (f_!,f^!) between the sheaf categories where f_! is direct image with proper support and f^! is a right adjoint. Now when f is proper on has f_!=f_* , so f^! is right adjoint to f_* .

You can find out what it does by adjoint yoga with the sheaf-Homs: Hom(f_*F,G)=Hom(F,f^!G).

Set F=O_X. Then (f^!G)(U)=Hom(O_X(U), f^!G(U))=Hom((f_* O_X)(U), G(U)). If you can determine the latter you know more. This is a very general answer, but it can help in concrete situations, boiling down the question to the knowledge of f_*O_X...

If you don't know whether the right adjoint exists, you can also try to define one via this equation.

-
Enclosing them in a pair of  works –  Greg Stevenson Oct 27 '09 at 20:59
The underscores only make italics in the preview; in the actual post it works fine. –  Eric Wofsey Oct 27 '09 at 21:00
You were right, thanks –  Peter Arndt Oct 27 '09 at 21:06
The general categorial picture is analyzed in here: tac.mta.ca/tac/volumes/11/4/11-04abs.html For the scheme part I am not sure, I have been skimming through EGA, Hartshorne's Residues and Duality and Konrad's Grothendieck Duality and Base Change but without success... - now I should go back to work! –  Peter Arndt Oct 27 '09 at 22:17

i agree with the answer from Greg, but in a different formalism. He used derived category. I did not. If f:X--->Y is a morphism of scheme. Then if f is affine morphism. Then direct image functor f_* :Cx---->Cy, has right adjoint functor f^!. Where Cx and Cy are category of sheaves or in particular, category of quasi coherent sheaves. So, in general, what we need is only the scheme is quasi compact and quasi separated.(I believe the quasi compact can be dropped, but I need some time to check globalization, I believe the flag variety of affine Kac-Moody algebra which is not quasi compact lies in this case). The reference is M.Kontsevich and A.Rosenberg Noncommutative spaces and flat descent. MPIM preprint

There is another related question. In category of quasi coherent sheaves. Say, if we have scheme morphism X---->Y, we always can get inverse image functor f^*: QcohY--->QcohX. But the direct image functor does not always exist. But if the scheme we are talking about is quasi compact and quasi separated. It exists. There is of course weaker condition. For this case, one can see the following papers: 1 D.Orlov Quasi coherent sheaves in commutative and noncommutative geometry 2 M.Kontsevich, A.Rosenberg. Noncommutative stack MPIM preprint 3 SGA 6

-
I find your answer difficult to understand... twice you say "the scheme is quasi compact and quasi separated", but which scheme are you talking about? X? Y? Or are you talking about the morphism X --> Y? –  Andrew Critch Nov 17 '09 at 3:29
Oh, I am sorry for not pointing out. I mean the quasi compactness and quasi separtedness of scheme Y implies the existence of direct image functor which is right adjoint to f^*. For your original question, I mean the scheme X should be quasi compact and quasi separated. –  Shizhuo Zhang Nov 17 '09 at 6:41
Shizhuo, the question in the title is about the sheaf direct image, not about the direct image for quasicoherent modules (the latter direct image may even not exist for a general morphism of schemes). –  Zoran Skoda May 15 '11 at 19:49