Scheme/Locally free sheaf/Torsor/Ext and projective bundles/Remark

Let ${}{\mathcal {S}}$ denote a locally free sheaf on a scheme ${}X$. For a cohomology class ${}c\in H^{1}(X,{\mathcal {S}})$ one can construct a geometric object: Because of ${}H^{1}(X,{\mathcal {S}})\cong \operatorname {Ext} ^{1}({\mathcal {O}}_{X},{\mathcal {S}})$, the class defines an extension

$0\longrightarrow {\mathcal {S}}\longrightarrow {{\mathcal {S}}'}\longrightarrow {\mathcal {O}}_{X}\longrightarrow 0.$

This extension is such that under the connecting homomorphism of cohomology, ${}1\in \Gamma (X,{\mathcal {O}}_{X})$ is sent to ${}c\in H^{1}(X,{\mathcal {S}})$. The extension yields a projective subbundle

${}{\mathbb {P} }({\mathcal {S}}^{\vee })\subset {\mathbb {P} }({{\mathcal {S}}'}^{\vee })\,.$

If ${}V$ is the corresponding geometric vector bundle of ${}{\mathcal {S}}$, one may think of ${}{\mathbb {P} }({\mathcal {S}}^{\vee })$ as ${}{\mathbb {P} }(V)$ which consists for every base point ${}x\in X$ of all the lines in the fiber ${}V_{x}$ passing through the origin. The projective subbundle ${}{\mathbb {P} }(V)$ has codimension one inside ${}{\mathbb {P} }(V')$, for every point it is a projective space lying (linearly) inside a projective space of one dimension higher. The complement is then over every point an affine space. One can show that the global complement

${}T={\mathbb {P} }({{\mathcal {S}}'}^{\vee })\setminus {\mathbb {P} }({\mathcal {S}}^{\vee })\,$

is another model for the torsor given by the cohomology class. The advantage of this viewpoint is that we may work, in particular when ${}X$ is projective, in an entirely projective setting.