Rings, Modules, and Linear Algebra Sean Sather-Wagstaff Department of Mathematics, NDSU Dept # 2750, PO Box 6050, Fargo, ND 58108-6050 USA E-mail address:
[email protected] URL: http://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~ssatherw/ October 1, 2011. Contents Introduction v Notation vii Chapter 1. Foundations 1 1.1. Sets and Arithmetic 1 1.2. Additive Abelian Groups 1 Chapter 2. Ring Theory 5 2.1. Rings, Homomorphisms, Subrings, and Ideals 5 2.2. Operations on Ideals 9 2.3. Prime Ideals and Maximal Ideals 12 2.4. Quotient Fields 15 2.5. Factorization 16 2.6. Polynomial rings 23 2.7. Factorization in Polynomial Rings 30 Chapter 3. Module Theory 35 3.1. Modules 35 3.2. Module Homomorphisms 36 3.3. Submodules 37 3.4. Generators 40 3.5. Bases, Free Modules, and Vector Spaces 42 3.6. Hom 49 3.7. Exact Sequences 51 3.8. Noetherian Rings and Modules 55 3.9. Modules over Principal Ideal Domains 57 3.10. Left Exactness of Hom 61 3.11. Projective Modules and Injective Modules 63 3.12. Tensor Product 66 3.13. Localization 73 iii Introduction Two of the most fundamental objects in mathematics are (1) the set Z of all integers, and (2) the set R[x] of all polynomials in x with real number coefficients. These two sets share many common features. Each one comes equipped with two binary operations, addition and multiplication, that satisfy certain axioms essen- tially saying that these operations are \nice". A set satisfying with two operations satisfying these axioms is called a commutative ring with identity.