REGULAR LOCAL ALGEBRAS OVER VALUATION DOMAINS: WEAK DIMENSION AND REGULAR SEQUENCES

Abstract

A local ring O is called regular if every finitely generated ideal I ◃ O possesses finite projective dimension. In the article localizations O = Aq, q ∈ Spec A, of a finitely presented, flat algebra A over a Prüfer domain R are investigated with respect to regularity: this property of O is shown to be equivalent to the finiteness of the weak homological dimension wdim O. A formula to compute wdim O is provided. Furthermore regular sequences within the maximal ideal M ◃ O are studied: it is shown that regularity of O implies the existence of a maximal regular sequence of length wdim O. If q ∩ R has finite height, then this sequence can be chosen such that the radical of the ideal generated by its members equals M. As a consequence it is proved that if O is regular, then the factor ring O/(q ∩ R)O, which is noetherian, is Cohen–Macaulay. If in addition (q ∩ R)Rq ∩ R is not finitely generated, then O/(q ∩ R)O itself is regular.