Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T04:15:10.011Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Classification of multiplication modules over multiplication rings with finitely many minimal primes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 October 2024

Volodymyr Bavula*
Affiliation:
School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S3 7RH, UK
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A classification of multiplication modules over multiplication rings with finitely many minimal primes is obtained. A characterization of multiplication rings with finitely many minimal primes is given via faithful, Noetherian, distributive modules. It is proven that for a multiplication ring with finitely many minimal primes every faithful, Noetherian, distributive module is a faithful multiplication module, and vice versa.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Glasgow Mathematical Journal Trust

1. Introduction

In this paper, all rings are commutative with 1 and all modules are unital. A ring $R$ is called a multiplication ring if $I$ and $J$ are ideals of $R$ such that $J\subseteq I$ then $J=I^{\prime }I$ for some ideal $I^{\prime }$ of $R$ . An $R$ -module $M$ is called a multiplication moduleif each submodule of $M$ is equal to $IM$ for some ideal $I$ of the ring $R$ . The concept of multiplication ring was introduced by Krull in [Reference Krull5]. In [Reference Mott6], Mott proved that a multiplication ring has finitely many minimal prime ideals iff it is a Noetherian ring.

The next theorem is a description of multiplication rings with finitely many minimal primes.

Theorem 1.1. ([Reference Alsuraiheed and Bavula1 , Theorem 1.1]) Let $R$ be a ring with finitely many minimal prime ideals. Then the ring $R$ is a multiplication ring iff $R\cong \displaystyle \prod _{i=1}^{n} D_{i}$ is a finite direct product of rings where $D_{i}$ is either a Dedekind domain or an Artinian, local principal ideal ring.

Classification of multiplication modules over multiplication rings with finitely many minimal primes. Using Theorem 1.1, a criterion for a direct sum of modules to be a multiplication module (Theorem 2.1) and some other results, a classification of multiplication modules over a multiplication ring with finitely many minimal primes is given, Theorem 1.2.

Theorem 1.2. Let $R$ be a multiplication ring with finitely many minimal primes, that is $R\cong \displaystyle \prod _{i=1}^{n} D_{i}$ is a finite direct product of rings where $D_{i}$ is either a Dedekind domain or an Artinian, local principal ideal ring and $1=e_1+\cdots + e_n$ be the corresponding sum of orthogonal idempotents of the ring $R$ . Let $M$ be an $R$ -modules and $M=\oplus _{i=1}^n M_i$ where $M_i:= e_iM$ . Then the $R$ -module $M$ is a multiplication $R$ -module iff each $D_i$ -module $M_i$ is either isomorphic to $D_i$ or to $D_i/I_i$ where $I_i$ is a nonzero ideal of $D_i$ or to a nonzero ideal of the ring $D_i$ in case when the ring $D_i$ is a Dedekind domain.

Classification of faithful multiplication modules over a multiplication ring with finitely many minimal primes.

Theorem 1.3. Let $R$ be a multiplication ring with finitely many minimal primes. We keep the notation of Theorem 1.2 ( $R\cong \displaystyle \prod _{i=1}^{n} D_{i}$ ). Then an $R$ -module $M=\oplus _{i=1}^n M_i$ (where $M_i= e_iM$ ) is a faithful multiplication $R$ -module iff for each $i=1, \ldots, n$ , either ${}_RM_i\simeq D_i$ or ${}_RM_i\simeq I_i$ where $I_i$ is a nonzero ideal of the ring $D_i$ in case when $D_i$ is a Dedekind domain.

Proof. The theorem follows at once from Theorem 1.2.

Characterization of multiplication rings with finitely many minimal primes via faithful, Noetherian, distributive modules. Let $R$ be a ring and $M$ be an $R$ -module. A submodule $N$ of $M$ is called a distributive submodule if one of the following equivalent conditions holds: For any submodules $M_1$ and $M_2$ of $M$ ,

\begin{eqnarray*} (M_1+M_2)\cap N &=& M_1\cap N +M_2\cap N, \\ M_1\cap M_2+ N &=&(M_1+N)\cap (M_2+N). \end{eqnarray*}

The $R$ -module $M$ is called a distributive module if all submodules of $M$ are distributive submodules.

Theorem 1.4. A commutative ring $R$ is a multiplication ring with finitely many minimal primes iff there is a faithful, Noetherian, distributive $R$ -module.

Classification of faithful, Noetherian, distributive modules over a multiplication ring with finitely many minimal primes.

Theorem 1.5. Let $R$ be a multiplication ring with finitely many minimal primes. Then every faithful, Noetherian, distributive $R$ -module is a faithful multiplication $R$ -module, and vice versa.

2. Proofs

In this section, we prove the results from the Introduction.

Definition 2.1. We say that the intersection condition holds for a direct sum $M=\bigoplus _{\lambda \in \Lambda } M_{\lambda }$ of nonzero $R$ -modules $M_{\lambda }$ if for all submodules $N$ of $M$ , $N= \bigoplus _{\lambda \in \Lambda } (N\bigcap M_\lambda )$ .

Definition 2.2. Let $M=\bigoplus _{\lambda \in \Lambda } M_{\lambda }$ be a direct sum of nonzero $R$ -modules with $\textrm{card}(\Lambda )\geqslant 2$ , $\mathfrak{a}_{\lambda }=\textrm{ann}_{R}(M_{\lambda })$ and $\mathfrak{a}^{\prime }_{\lambda }=\cap _{\mu \neq \lambda }\mathfrak{a}_{\mu }$ . We say that the orthogonality condition holds for the direct sum $M=\bigoplus _{\lambda \in \Lambda } M_{\lambda }$ if $\mathfrak{a}^{\prime }_{\lambda }M_{\mu }= \delta _{\lambda \mu }M_{\mu }$ for all $\lambda, \mu \in \Lambda$ . Clearly, $\mathfrak{a}^{\prime }_{\lambda }\neq 0$ for all $\lambda \in \Lambda$ (since all $M_{\lambda } \neq 0$ ). In particular, $\mathfrak{a}_{\lambda } \neq 0$ for all $\lambda \in \Lambda$ .

Definition 2.3. Let $M=\bigoplus _{\lambda \in \Lambda } M_{\lambda }$ be a direct sum of nonzero $R$ -modules with $\textrm{card}(\Lambda ) \geq 2$ . We say that the strong orthogonality condition holds for $M$ if for each set of $R$ -modules $\lbrace N_{\lambda } \rbrace _{\lambda \in \Lambda }$ such that $N_{\lambda }\subseteq M_{\lambda }$ , there is a set of ideals $\lbrace I_{\lambda } \rbrace _{\lambda \in \Lambda }$ of $R$ such that $I_{\lambda } M_{\mu }=\delta _{\lambda \mu }N_{\lambda }$ for all $\lambda, $ $\mu \in \Lambda$ where $\delta _{\lambda \mu }$ is the Kronecker delta. The set of ideals $\lbrace I_{\lambda } \rbrace _{\lambda \in \Lambda }$ is called an orthogonalizer of $\lbrace N_{\lambda } \rbrace _{\lambda \in \Lambda }$ .

Theorem 2.1 is one of the criteria for a direct sum of modules to be a multiplication module that are obtained in [Reference Alsuraiheed and Bavula1]. It is given via the intersection and strong orthogonality conditions.

Theorem 2.4. ([Reference Alsuraiheed and Bavula2]) Let $M=\bigoplus _{\lambda \in \Lambda } M_{\lambda }$ be a direct sum of nonzero $R$ -modules with $\textrm{card}(\Lambda ) \geq 2$ . Then $M$ is a multiplication module iff the intersection and strong orthogonality conditions hold for the direct sum $M=\bigoplus _{\lambda \in \Lambda } M_{\lambda }$ .

An $R$ -module is called a cyclic if it is 1-generated. For an $R$ -module $M$ , let $\textrm{Cyc}_R(M)$ be the set of its cyclic submodules. For an $R$ -module $M$ , we denote by $\textrm{ann}_{R}(M)$ its annihilator. An $R$ -module $M$ is called faithful if $\textrm{ann}_{R}(M)=0$ . For a submodule $N$ of $M$ , the set $[N:M]:= \textrm{ann}_R(M/N)= \{ r\in R\, | \, rM \subseteq N\}$ is an ideal of the ring $R$ that contains the annihilator $\textrm{ann}_R(M)=[0:M]$ of the module $M$ . The set ${\theta }(M):=\sum _{C\in \textrm{Cyc}_R(M)}[C:M]$ is an ideal of $R$ . Clearly, $\textrm{ann}_R(M)\subseteq{\theta }(M)$ . If $M$ is an ideal of $R$ then $M\subseteq \theta (M)$ .

Proof of Theorem 1.2. $(\Leftarrow )$ All the $D_i$ -modules $M_i$ of the theorem are multiplication $D_i$ -modules. Hence, the direct sum $\oplus _{i=1}^nM_i$ is a multiplication module over the direct product rings $R=\prod _{i=1}^nD_i$ .

$(\Rightarrow )$ Suppose that the $R$ -module $M=\oplus _{i=1}^n M_i$ is a multiplication $R$ -module where $M_i=e_iM$ for $i=1, \ldots, n$ . We have the following claims.

(i) The $D_i$ -module $M_i$ is a multiplication $D_i$ -module: The statement is obvious since $R=\prod _{i=1}^nD_i$ .

(ii) The $D_i$ -module $M_i$ is a finitely generated $D_i$ -module: Since $M_i$ is a multiplication $D_i$ -module,

\begin{equation*}M_i=\sum _{C\in \textrm {Cyc}_{D_i}(M_i)}C=\sum _{C\in \textrm {Cyc}_{D_i}(M_i)}[C:M_i]M_i=(\sum _{C\in \textrm {Cyc}_{D_i}(M_i)}[C:M_i])M_i={\theta } (M_i)M_i.\end{equation*}

The ideal ${\theta } (M_i)=\sum _{C\in \textrm{Cyc}_{D_i}(M_i)}[C:M_i]$ of the Noetherian ring $D_i$ is a finitely generated $D_i$ -module, that is, ${\theta } (M_i) = \sum _{i=1}^{n_i}D_i{\theta }_i$ for some elements ${\theta }_i\in{\theta } (M_i)$ . Then

\begin{equation*}M_i={\theta } (M_i) M_i=\sum _{i=1}^{n_i}D_i{\theta }_iM_i\subseteq \sum _{i=1}^{n_i}C_i\subseteq M_i,\end{equation*}

and so the $D_i$ -module $M_i=\sum _{i=1}^{n_i} C_i$ is finitely generated.

(iii) Suppose that the ring $D_i$ is a Dedekind domain. Then the $D_i$ -module $M_i$ is isomorphic either to $D_i$ or to $D_i/I_i$ or to $J_i$ where $I_i$ and $J_i$ are ideals of the ring $D_i$ : It is well-known that a nonzero finitely generated module $\mathcal{M}$ over a Dedekind domain $D$ is a direct sum $\mathcal{M} = \mathcal{F} \oplus\mathcal{T}$ of a torsion-free $D$ -module $\mathcal{F}$ and a torsion $D$ -module $\mathcal{T}$ ; $\mathcal{F} = I\oplus D^m$ for some ideal $I$ of $D$ and $m\geq 0$ ; and $\mathcal{T} =\oplus _{i=1}^{t_i}D/\mathfrak{p}_i^{m_i}$ where $\mathfrak{p}_i$ are maximal ideals of the ring $D$ and $m_i\in{\mathbb{N}}$ . Suppose that the $D$ -module $\mathcal{M}$ is a multiplication $D$ -module. By Theorem 2.1, the direct sum of $D$ -modules

\begin{equation*}\mathcal{M} = I\oplus D^m \oplus \bigoplus _{i=1}^{t_i} D/\mathfrak {p}_i^{m_i}\end{equation*}

must satisfy the strong orthogonality conditions. Hence, either $\mathcal{M} = I$ of $\mathcal{M} = D$ or $\mathcal{M} = \oplus _{i=1}^{t_i} D/\mathfrak{p}_i^{m_i}$ where $\mathfrak{p}_1, \ldots, \mathfrak{p}_{t_i}$ are distinct maximal ideals of the ring $D$ , and so $\mathcal{M} =\oplus _{i=1}^{t_i} D/\mathfrak{p}_i^{m_i}\simeq D/\prod _{i=1}^{t_i}\mathfrak{p}_i^{m_i}$ .

(iv) Suppose that $D_i$ is an Artinian, local, principal ideal ring. Then the $D_i$ -module $M_i$ is isomorphic either to $D_i$ or to $D_i/I_i$ where $I_i$ is a nonzero ideal of $D_i$ : Let $D=D_i$ and $\mathfrak{m}$ be the maximal ideal of the local ring $D_i$ and $\mathfrak{m}^{\nu } \neq 0$ and $\mathfrak{m}^{\nu +1} =0$ for some natural number $\nu$ . Then

\begin{equation*}\{ D, \mathfrak {m}, \mathfrak {m}^2, \ldots, \mathfrak {m}^\nu, \mathfrak {m}^{\nu +1} =0\}\end{equation*}

is the set of all the ideals of the ring $D$ . The $D$ -module $M_i$ is a nonzero finitely generated multiplication $D$ -module. Hence, $\{ M_i, \mathfrak{m} M_i, \mathfrak{m}^2 M_i, \ldots, \mathfrak{m}^\mu M_i, \mathfrak{m}^{\mu +1} M_i =0\}$ is the set of all $D$ -submodules of $M_i$ for some natural number $\mu$ such that $\mu \leq \nu$ . In particular, the $D$ -module $M_i$ is a uniserial $D$ -module since

\begin{equation*}M_i\supset \mathfrak {m} M_i \supset \mathfrak {m}^2 M_i\supset \cdots \supset \mathfrak {m}^\mu M_i\supset \mathfrak {m}^{\mu +1} M_i =0.\end{equation*}

Since the $D$ -module $M_i$ is a uniserial, we have that

\begin{equation*}{\textrm {dim }}_{k_{\mathfrak {m}}}(M_i/\mathfrak {m} M_i)=1\end{equation*}

where $k_{\mathfrak{m}} :=D/\mathfrak{m}$ , and so $M_i= Dm_i+\mathfrak{m} M_i$ for some element $m_i\in M_i\backslash \mathfrak{m} M_i$ . By the Nakayama Lemma, $M_i=Dm_i$ , and the statement (iv) follows.

Corollary 2.5. Let $R$ be an Artinian multiplication ring. Then every multiplication $R$ -module is an epimorphic image of the $R$ -module $R$ .

Proof. The corollary follows at once from Theorem 1.2.

Corollary 2.6. Let $R$ be a multiplication ring with finitely many minimal primes and $M$ be a multiplication $R$ -module. Then

  1. 1. The endomorphism ring ${ \textrm{End }}_R(M)$ is also a multiplication ring.

  2. 2. ${ \textrm{End }}_R(M)\simeq R/\textrm{ann}_R(M)$ .

  3. 3. The ${ \textrm{End }}_R(M)$ -module $M$ is a faithful multiplication ${ \textrm{End }}_R(M)$ -module.

Proof. The corollary follows at once from Theorem 1.2.

In the proof of Theorem 1.4, we will use the following results.

Theorem 2.7. Let $R$ be a commutative ring.

  1. 1. ([Reference Barnard3 , Corollary, p. 177]) Let $M$ be a Noetherian distributive $R$ -module. Then every submodule of $M$ which is locally nonzero at every maximal ideal of $R$ , is of the form $IM$ where $I$ is a unique product of maximal ideals of $R$ .

  2. 2. ([Reference Barnard3 , Lemma 2.(ii)]) A finitely generated $R$ -module $M$ is a multiplication module iff the $R_{\mathfrak{p}}$ -module $M_{\mathfrak{p}}$ is a multiplication module for all prime/maximal ideals $\mathfrak{p}$ of $R$ .

  3. 3. ([Reference Barnard4 , Theorem1.3.(ii)]) (Cancellation Law) If $M$ is a finitely generated, faithful multiplication $R$ -module then for any two ideals $A$ and $B$ of $R$ , $AM\subseteq BM$ iff $A\subseteq B$ .

Proof of Theorem 1.4. $(\Rightarrow )$ By Theorem 1.2, the $R$ -module $R$ is a faithful, Noetherian, distributive $R$ -module.

$(\Leftarrow )$ Let $M$ be faithful, Noetherian, distributive $R$ -module.

(i) The ring $R$ is a Noetherian ring: The $R$ -module $M$ is Noetherian, hence finitely generated, $M=\sum _{i=1}^n Rm_i$ for some elements $m_1, \ldots, m_n\in M$ . The $R$ -module $M$ is a faithful module. Hence, the map $R\rightarrow \oplus _{i=1}^n Rm_i$ , $r\mapsto (rm_1, \ldots, rm_n)$ is an $R$ -monomorphism. The direct sum is a Noetherian $R$ -module (as a finite direct sum of Noetherian modules), and the statement (i) follows.

(ii) The ring $R$ has only finitely many minimal primes: The statement (ii) follows from the statement (i).

(iii) For all maximal ideals $\mathfrak{m}$ of the ring $R$ , the $R_{\mathfrak{m}}$ -module $M_{\mathfrak{m}}$ is faithful, Noetherian and distributive: The $R$ -module $M$ is finitely generated. Hence, $\textrm{ann}_{R_{\mathfrak{m}}}(M_{\mathfrak{m}}) = \textrm{ann}_R(M)_{\mathfrak{m}}=0$ since $\textrm{ann}_R(M)=0$ . Clearly, the $R_{\mathfrak{m}}$ -module $M_{\mathfrak{m}}$ is Noetherian and distributive (since the $R$ -module $M$ is so and localizations respect finite intersections).

(iv) The $R_{\mathfrak{m}}$ -module $M_{\mathfrak{m}}$ is a multiplication $R_{\mathfrak{m}}$ -module:

The statement (iv) follows from the statement (iii) and Theorem 2.7.(1).

(v) The R-module M is a multiplication module: The $R$ -module $M$ is finitely generated. By the statement (iv) and Theorem 2.7.(2), the $R$ -module $M$ is a multiplication $R$ -module.

Let ( $\mathcal{I} (R), \subseteq )$ be the lattice of ideals of the ring $R$ and $({\textrm{Sub}}_R(M), \subseteq )$ be the lattice of $R$ -submodules of the $R$ -module $M$ .

(vi) The map $\mathcal{I} (R)\rightarrow{\textrm{Sub}}_R(M)$ , $ I\mapsto IM$ is an isomorphism of latices: The $R$ -module $M$ is a finitely generated, faithful multiplication module (the statement (v)), and the statement (vi) follows from Theorem 2.7.(3).

(vii) The ring $R$ is a multiplication ring: The statement (vii) follows from the statements (v) and (vi).

Now, the theorem follows from the statements (ii) and (vii).

Proof of Theorem 1.5. $(\Rightarrow )$ See the statement (vi) in the proof of Theorem 1.4.

$(\Leftarrow )$ This implication follows at once from Theorem 1.3.

License

For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.

Conflicts of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Data availability statement

Data sharing not applicable—no new data generated.

References

Alsuraiheed, T. and Bavula, V. V., Characterization of multiplication commutative rings with finitely many minimal prime ideals, Commun. Algebra 47(11) (2019), 45334540.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alsuraiheed, T. and Bavula, V. V., Multiplication modules over noncommutative rings, J. Algebra 584 (2021), 6988.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnard, A., Multiplication modules, J. Algebra 71(1) (1981), 174178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
El-Bast, Z. A. and Smith, P. F., Multiplication modules, Commun. Algebra 16(4) (1988), 755779.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krull, W., Ideal Theory (New York, 1948).Google Scholar
Mott, J. L., Multiplication rings containing only finitely many minimal prime ideals, J. Sci. Hiroshima. UNIV. SER. 16(1) (1969), 7383 Google Scholar