Part A is this post. Let me prove the opposite of what the exercise in part A wrongly claimed (sigh).

Lemma: Let Z —> Y be a finite morphism of affine schemes. Then there exists a closed immersion Z —> Z’ of schemes over Y such that Z’ is finite syntomic over Y.

Remark: If we embed Z’ into a smooth scheme X over Y, then F = O_{Z’} is a coherent O_X-module flat over Y such that the generic points of Z are associated points of the restriction of F to their fibres.

Proof: Write Y = Spec(A) and Z = Spec(B). Choose generators b_1, …, b_r of B as an algebra over A. As B is finite over A, each b_i is the root of a monic polynomial P_i with coefficients in A. Then B’ = A[x_1, …, x_r]/(P_1(x_1), …, P_r(x_r)) is finite syntomic over A and Z’ = Spec(B’) works. EndProof.

The point I want to make in this post is that we have some equidimensionality result for associated points of flat modules, namely EGA IV, Proposition 12.1.1.5 (see Tag 0GSF). It implies the following: suppose that f : X —> Y is smooth with Y Noetherian and irreducible. Suppose that F is coherent on X and flat over Y. Let x be a point of the generic fibre of f which is an associated point of F. Then the zariski closure Z ⊂ X of the singleton {x} has the property that Z —> Y is equidimensional!

So for example, there is no finite module M over k[x, y, z] which is flat over k[x, y] such that (x – yt) is an associated prime of M. Presumably, you can see this directly? Is it easy? I didn’t try.

Enjoy!