The Width of a Module

Abstract

An R-module N is said to have finite width n if n is the smallest integer such that for any set of n + 1 elements of N, at least one of the elements is in the submodule generated by the remaining n. The width of N over R will be denoted by W(R, N).The notion of width was introduced by Brameret [2, p. 3605]. However, Cohen [3] investigated rings of finite rank, which, in the case that R is a local Noetherian domain, is equivalent to width (Proposition 1.6). He showed that finite width of R was both equivalent to R having Krull dimension one, and to R having the restricted minimum condition (Theorem 1.12).