Ideals and Reality

Besides giving an introduction to Commutative Algebra - the theory of c- mutative rings - this book is devoted to the study of projective modules and the minimal number of generators of modules and ideals. The notion of a module over a ring R is a generalization of that of a vector space over a field k. The axioms are identical. But whereas every vector space possesses a basis, a module need not always have one. Modules possessing a basis are called free. So a finitely generated free R-module is of the form Rn for some n E IN, equipped with the usual operations. A module is called p- jective, iff it is a direct summand of a free one. Especially a finitely generated R-module P is projective iff there is an R-module Q with P @ Q S Rn for some n. Remarkably enough there do exist nonfree projective modules. Even there are nonfree P such that P @ Rm S Rn for some m and n. Modules P having the latter property are called stably free. On the other hand there are many rings, all of whose projective modules are free, e. g. local rings and principal ideal domains. (A commutative ring is called local iff it has exactly one maximal ideal. ) For two decades it was a challenging problem whether every projective module over the polynomial ring k[X1,. . .

Basic Commutative Algebra, Spectrum, Modules, Localization, Multiplicatively Closed Subsets, Rings and Modules of Fractions, Localization Technique, Prime Ideals of a Localized Ring, Integral Ring Extensions, Integral Elements, Integrality and Primes, Direct Sums and Products, The Tensor Product, Definition, Functoriality, Exactness, Flat Algebras, Exterior Powers, Introduction to Projective Modules, Generalities on Projective Modules, Rank, Special Residue Class Rings, Projective Modules of Rank 1, Stably Free Modules, Generalities, Localized Polynomial Rings, Action of GLn (R) on Umn (R), Elementary Action on Unimodular Rows, Examples of Completable Vectors, Stable Freeness over Polynomial Rings, Schanuel's Lemma, Proof of Stable Freeness, Serre's Conjecture, Elementary Divisors, Horrocks' Theorem, Quillen's Local Global Principle, Suslin's Proof, Vaserstein's Proof, Continuous Vector Bundles, Categories and Functors, Vector Bundles, Vector Bundles and Projective Modules, Examples, Vector Bundles and Grassmannians, The Direct Limit and Infinite Matrices, Metrization of the Set of Continuous Maps, Correspondence of Vector Bundles and Classes of Maps, Projective Modules over Topological Rings, Basic Commutative Algebra II, Noetherian Rings and Modules, Irreducible Sets, Dimension of Rings, Artinian Rings, Small Dimension Theorem, Noether Normalization, Affine Algebras, Hilbert's Nullstellensatz, Dimension of a Polynomial Ring, Splitting Theorem and Lindel's Proof, Serre's Splitting Theorem, Lindel's Proof, Regular Rings, Definition, Regular Residue Class Rings, Homological Dimension, Associated Prime Ideals, Homological Characterization, Dedekind Rings, Examples, Modules over Dedekind Rings, Finiteness of Class Numbers, Number of Generators, The Problems, Regular Sequences, Forster-Swan Theorem, Varieties as Intersections of n Hypersurfaces, Curves as Complete Intersection, A Motivation of Serre's Conjecture, The Conormal Module, Local Complete Intersection Curves, Cowsik - Nori Theorem, A Projection Lemma, Proof of Cowsik-Nori, Classical EE - Estimates, Examples of Set Theoretical Complete Intersection Curves.