Blowup of smooth subscheme of smooth scheme is smooth

1k Views Asked by At

In Vakil's notes (http://math.stanford.edu/~vakil/216blog/FOAGjan2915public.pdf), Theorem 22.3.10, he shows that, if $X\hookrightarrow Y$ is a closed embedding of smooth varieties over $k$, then ${\rm Bl}_X Y$ is smooth.

During the proof, he shows that ${\rm Bl}_X Y$ is regular at all the points on the exceptional divisor, and then immediately concludes smoothness.

I thought that we needed $k$ is perfect in order to get smoothness from regularity (12.2.10 in the same notes). What is special about this situation that I'm missing?

1

There are 1 best solutions below

1
On BEST ANSWER

It's possible he is implicitly using that blowup commutes with flat base change (should be in stacks somewhere), and then working over an extension field...