A Note on Gorenstein Rings of Embedding Codimension Three

Abstract

Let A = R/, where R is a regular local ring of arbitrary dimension and is an ideal of R. If A is a Gorenstein ring and if height = 2, it is easily proved that A is a complete intersection, i.e., is generated by two elements (Serre [5], Proposition 3). Hence Gorenstein rings which are not complete intersections are of embedding codimension at least three. An example of these rings is found in Bass’ paper [1] (p. 29). This is obtained as a quotient of a three dimensional regular local ring by an ideal which is generated by five elements, i.e., generated by a regular sequence plus two more elements. In this paper, suggested by this example, we prove that if A is a Gorenstein ring and if height = 3, then is minimally generated by an odd number of elements. If A has a greater codimension, presumably there is no such restriction on the minimal number of generators for , as will be conceived from the proof.