Rings with Chain Conditions

Abstract

Chapter 7 continues to develop the theory of rings and studies chain conditions for ideals of a ring. The motivation came from an interesting property of the ring of integers Z that its every ascending chain of ideals terminates. This interesting property of Z was first recognized by the German mathematician Emmy Noether (1882–1935). This property leads to the concept of Noetherian rings. On the other hand, Emil Artin (1898–1962) showed that there are some rings in which every infinite descending chain of ideals terminates. Such rings are called Artinian rings. The ring Z has an infinite descending chain of ideals. This property of Z shows that Z is not an Artinian ring. In this chapter special classes of rings are also studied and deeper results on ideal theory are proved. Some finiteness condition for ideals is imposed and Noetherian rings are introduced which are versatile. The most convenient equivalent formulation of the Noetherian requirement is that the ideals of the ring satisfy the ascending chain condition. A connection between a Noetherian domain and a factorization domain is established. Moreover, the Hilbert Basis Theorem is proved. This theorem has made a revolution and has given an extensive class of Noetherian rings. Its application to algebraic geometry is also discussed. The study in this chapter culminates in rings with a descending chain condition for ideals, which determines their ideal structure.