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Lifting idempotents à la Grothendieck August 29, 2009

Posted by Akhil Mathew in algebra, algebraic geometry, commutative algebra.
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I am going to get back shortly to discussing algebraic number theory and discrete valuation rings. But this tidbit from EGA 1 that I just learned today was too much fun to resist. Besides, it puts the material on completions in more context, so I think the digression is justified. 

Lifting Idempotents

The theorem says we can lift “approximate idempotents” in complete rings to actual ones. In detail: 

Theorem 1 Let {A} be a ring complete with respect to the {I}-adic filtration. Then if {\bar{e} \in A/I} is idempotent (i.e. {\bar{e}^2=\bar{e}}) then there is an idempotent { e \in A} such that {e} reduces to {\bar{e}}.   (more…)

Generic freeness I July 29, 2009

Posted by Akhil Mathew in algebra, commutative algebra.
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There is a useful fact in algebraic geometry that if you have a coherent sheaf over a Noetherian integral scheme, then it is locally free on some dense open subset. That is the content of today’s post, although I will use the language of commutative algebra than that of schemes (except at the end), to keep the presentation as elementary as possible. The goal is to get the generic freeness in a restricted case. Later, I’ll discuss the full “generic freeness” lemma of Grothendieck.

Noetherian Rings and Modules

All rings are assumed commutative in this post.

As I have already mentioned, a ring is Noetherian if each ideal of {A} is finitely generated. Similarly, a module is Noetherian if every submodule is finitely generated. I will summarize the basic facts below briefly.

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