In mathematics, a group scheme is a type of algebro-geometric object equipped with a composition law. Group schemes arise naturally as symmetries of schemes, and they generalize algebraic groups, in the sense that all algebraic groups have group scheme structure, but group schemes are not necessarily connected, smooth, or defined over a field. This extra generality allows one to study richer infinitesimal structures, and this can help one to understand and answer questions of arithmetic significance. The category of group schemes is somewhat better behaved than that of group varieties, since all homomorphisms have kernels, and there is a well-behaved deformation theory. Group schemes that are not algebraic groups play a significant role in arithmetic geometry and algebraic topology, since they come up in contexts of Galois representations and moduli problems. The initial development of the theory of group schemes was due to Alexander Grothendieck, Michel Raynaud and Michel Demazure in the early 1960s.
A group scheme is a group object in a category of schemes that has fiber products and some final object S. That is, it is an S-scheme G equipped with one of the equivalent sets of data
A homomorphism of group schemes is a map of schemes that respects multiplication. This can be precisely phrased either by saying that a map f satisfies the equation fμ = μ(f × f), or by saying that f is a natural transformation of functors from schemes to groups (rather than just sets).