Does invertibility of a section $f$ (of a sheaf of rings) in every open set containing $x$ imply invertibility of $f$ in the stalk at $x$?

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Let $\mathcal{O}$ be a sheaf of commutative rings on a topological space $X$.

Let a point $x \in X$ and a global section $f \in \mathcal{O}(X)$ be given.

Suppose that for every open $U \subset X$ with $U \ni x$ we have that $\mathrm{res}|^X_U(f)$ is invertible (a unit) in the comm ring $\mathcal{O}(U)$.

Then, does it hold that the germ of $f$ at $x$ is invertible in the stalk $\mathcal{O}_x$?


I guess a related question (but a stronger result) would be: is the set-of-invertible-elements functor $\mathrm{CommRings} \rightarrow \mathrm{Set}$ a co-continuous functor?


Edit: as has been pointed out below, actually $f$ only needs to be invertible in at least one neighborhood $U$ of $x$, after which $f$ is then invertible in every open subset of $U$ since ring homomorphisms preserve invertible elements.

Thank you also to the very thorough answer below which explained how to get down to the level of stalks.

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Yes.

Since ring homomorphisms preserve inverses, we see that if $fg = 1$ on $U$, then for each $V \subseteq U$ we have $(f \upharpoonright_V)(g \upharpoonright_V) = 1$ on $V$. It's not hard to show that this means $f_x g_x = 1$ in the stalk at $x$ by using the rule that we can compute products in the stalk by $[(f,V_1)] \ [(g,V_2)] = [(fg, V_1 \cap V_2)]$.

Another way to see this (which I mention mainly for cultural growth) is by using the internal language of the sheaf topos $\text{Sh}(X)$.

Indeed a sheaf of rings is "just" a ring object in this topos, and since $\top \vdash \exists! g . fg = 1$ is a geometric sequent, theorems in categorical logic immediately tell us that the following are equivalent:

  1. $f$ has an inverse globally
  2. $f$ has an inverse on each open set $U$
  3. $f$ has an inverse at each stalk

For more information, see Ingo Belchschmidt's (excellent) PhD thesis here. In fact, this is an example given in chapter $1$.


I hope this helps ^_^