Cohen-Macaulay ring

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In mathematics, a Cohen-Macaulay ring is a particular type of commutative ring possessing some of the algebraic-geometric properties of a collection of nonsingular points, such as local equidimensionality.

The naming here is, in part, for Francis Sowerby Macaulay, who worked in elimination theory. The other half is for Irving S. Cohen, one of Zariski's students from his days at Johns Hopkins University.

1 Formal definition
2 Examples
3 Consequences of the condition
4 References
5 External link

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Formal definition

A local Cohen-Macaulay ring is defined as a commutative noetherian local ring with Krull dimension equal to its depth. The depth is always bounded above by the Krull dimension; equality provides some interesting regularity conditions on the ring, enabling some powerful theorems to be proven in this rather general setting.

A non-local ring is called Cohen-Macaulay if all of its localizations at prime ideals are Cohen-Macaulay.

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Examples

Every regular local ring is Cohen-Macaulay.
A field is a particular example of a regular local ring, so it is Cohen-Macaulay.
If K is a field, then the formal power series ring in one variable K[[X]] is a regular local ring and so is Cohen-Macaulay, but is not a field.
Any Gorenstein ring is Cohen-Macaulay. In particular, complete intersection rings are Cohen-Macaulay.
Rational Singularities are Cohen-Macaulay but not necessarily Gorenstein.
Any 0-dimensional ring is Cohen-Macaulay.
Following the last idea, if K is a field and X is an indeterminate, the ring K[X]/(X²) is a 0-dimensional local ring and so is Cohen-Macaulay, but it is not regular.
If K is a field, then the formal power series ring K[[t², t³]], where t is an indeterminate, is an example of a 1-dimensional local ring which is not regular but is Gorenstein, so is Cohen-Macaulay.
If K is a field, then the formal power series ring K[[t³, t⁴, t⁵]], where t is an indeterminate, is an example of a 1-dimensional local ring which is not Gorenstein but is Cohen-Macaulay.
More generally, any 1-dimensional (Noetherian, local) integral domain is Cohen-Macaulay.

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Consequences of the condition

One meaning of the Cohen-Macaulay condition is seen in coherent duality theory, where it corresponds to the dualizing object, which a priori lies in a derived category, being represented by a single module (coherent sheaf). The finer Gorenstein condition is then expressed by this module being projective (an invertible sheaf). Non-singularity (regularity) is still stronger— it corresponds to the notion of smoothness of a geometric object at a particular point. Thus, in a geometric sense, the notions of Gorenstein and Cohen-Macaulay capture increasingly larger sets of points than the smooth ones, points which are not necessarily smooth but behave in many ways like smooth points.

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