Writing and , the Cauchy-Riemann equations are
With continuous second derivatives, mixed derivatives commute. Thus
Both real and imaginary parts are harmonic.
For , the real and imaginary parts are and zero, so . For , they are and , so . The necessary Cauchy-Riemann equations fail at every point. Hence both functions are nowhere holomorphic, indeed nowhere complex differentiable.
Self-adjointness means for all , or . Take the inner product linear in its first variable. If with , then
Therefore every eigenvalue is real.
If is invariant and , then for every , and . Hence , proving invariance of the orthogonal complement.
Induct on . The zero-dimensional case is empty. For , choose an eigenvector and normalize it to a unit vector . Its span is invariant, so its orthogonal complement is invariant as just proved. The restriction of to that complement is again self-adjoint. Its dimension is , so induction supplies an orthonormal basis of eigenvectors there. Adjoining gives an orthonormal eigenbasis of . This proves the finite-dimensional spectral theorem without assuming it in the argument.
. For arbitrary matrices,
This is bilinear and symmetric. Also , with equality exactly when every entry vanishes. Thus it is an inner product, the Frobenius inner product.
If and , invariance of trace under transposition and cyclicity give
Furthermore , so every traceless matrix is orthogonal to the identity. One convenient orthonormal basis adapted to these observations is
Their entrywise inner products are zero in distinct pairs and one on the diagonal; four orthonormal vectors in this four-dimensional space form a basis.
Take . The ring homomorphism
is surjective. Its kernel of a ring homomorphism is exactly : a polynomial maps to zero precisely when its constant coefficient is even, in which case it has the form with and . By the first isomorphism theorem for rings,
This quotient ring is a field, so is a maximal ideal and in particular a prime ideal.
Suppose were a principal ideal. Because , the nonzero polynomial divides the constant , forcing its polynomial degree to be zero: for a nonzero integer . But also makes divide the coefficient of , so . This would give , contradicting the properness of the kernel of a ring homomorphism . Therefore
There is no conflict with part (c): . The zero-intersection hypothesis is exactly what excludes this example.
The nonzero ideal is principal because is a principal ideal domain. Choose a nonzero generator . Part (a) gives
The nonzero rational scalar is a unit in , so this rescaling does not change the generated principal ideal:
Part (b) now places in , since . Thus .
For the reverse inclusion, let be nonzero. The displayed equality supplies with . Multiplicativity of rational polynomial content gives
Since has integer coefficients, is a positive integer. The normalization from part (a) gives , so multiplying it by the integer proves . Consequently . The zero polynomial belongs as well, proving
This is the divisibility descent in Gauss lemma for polynomials: dividing an integer-coefficient polynomial by a primitive polynomial cannot introduce a denominator into an exact quotient. Here it yields the description of prime ideals of the integer polynomial ring above zero. The generator has positive polynomial degree, since a primitive constant would be a unit and would put in .
The set contains zero. It is closed under negatives because whenever . If and , then
since is an ideal of . Also, any can be written with and , giving
This proves that is an ideal of .
Clearly , by taking denominator one. Conversely, if , then for some positive integer . The condition implies . Since is a prime ideal, forces . Hence
In particular, is nonzero because it contains the nonzero ideal , and it is proper: otherwise its intersection with would contain . This is the concrete extension of an ideal and contraction of an ideal calculation for the localization that inverts nonzero integers.
For a nonzero polynomial , its polynomial content is the positive greatest common divisor of its coefficients:
For nonzero , choose a positive integer with and define its rational polynomial content by
To check independence of the denominator, write with and . Then , while multiplication of all coefficients by a positive integer gives
Dividing by proves , as required.
For multiplication, write . The integer-coefficient content identity permitted in the source gives
Thus
We will also use the normalization , with content one: if , then . It is a primitive polynomial. For a nonzero rational constant , the same definition gives .
Suppose a finite set of rational numbers generated as a module over . A positive common denominator makes every an integer. For every integer linear combination, therefore,
The entire generated submodule is contained in . But is a rational number outside that set: would require the noninteger . This contradicts generation of all of . Consequently
Each finite set of generators imposes a common denominator; the full rational number system has no such bound.
Using the common denominator , the three given generators become
Thus their submodule is contained in . For the reverse inclusion, the following explicit integer linear combination supplies the missing generator:
so
Therefore belongs to the generated submodule, and all its integer multiples belong as well. We have established equality in both directions:
Finally, for an integer forces , so the single generator is linearly independent. Hence the required basis of a module is
Let . Choose a positive integer clearing their denominators and write , with . If and are not both zero, then
is a relation with integer coefficients not both zero. If both vanish, use . Thus every pair is linearly dependent over .
A submodule is a torsion-free module: if for a nonzero integer and a rational number , then . If is also a finitely generated module, part (a), applied to the Euclidean domain , makes it a free module. Its rank cannot exceed one, since two different members of a basis of a module would be linearly independent, contradicting the relation just proved. Since , its rank cannot be zero. Therefore
The denominator-and-greatest common divisor construction in part (c) gives an explicit version of this result for a finitely generated subgroup of the rational additive group.
A Euclidean domain is a principal ideal domain. The structure theorem for finitely generated modules over a principal ideal domain therefore gives, for every finitely generated module over ,
where the are nonzero nonunits and . The factors are unique up to multiplication by units; is uniquely determined.
The rank of a module is this integer . Equivalently, with the field of fractions of ,
The tensor product of modules kills each displayed torsion summand after extending scalars to , while sending to , explaining the equality.
If is a torsion-free module, no summand can occur: its nonzero element is killed by the nonzero scalar . Hence and
This also covers , with .
By the first isomorphism theorem for rings, the given surjection identifies with . Since is a principal ideal domain, write .
If , the quotient ring is , an integral domain, so part (a)(ii) applies. If is a unit, the quotient ring is the zero ring; its unique element is associate to itself by multiplication by its identity, so it too is an associator ring.
In the remaining case, unique factorization gives
where is a unit, the are pairwise nonassociate prime elements, and . The principal ideals are pairwise comaximal: different prime factors have greatest common divisor , and Bézout's identity gives a linear combination equal to . The Chinese remainder theorem therefore gives a ring isomorphism
Every factor is an associator ring by part (c), and their finite direct product of rings is an associator ring by part (b). A ring isomorphism preserves units and principal ideals, so the property transfers to . Hence
Put . A principal ideal domain is a unique factorization domain, so every nonzero element of this quotient ring can be written
Indeed, remove the largest power of the prime element from a representative that is not divisible by . Since and have greatest common divisor up to a unit, Bézout's identity in the principal ideal domain gives . Thus is a unit in .
Consequently every nonzero principal ideal in is generated by one of . Include the zero ideal by assigning it exponent . These ideals are distinct: their inverse images in are , and equality of two different powers would, by cancellation in the integral domain, make the nonunit a unit.
Now suppose . If this is the zero ideal, both generators are zero and are associate elements. Otherwise their exponents agree, so write
with both units. Then
and the multiplier is a unit. Thus
The exponent detects the principal ideal, while its remaining factor is invertible; this is why zero divisors cause no obstruction here.

Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project

Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
We have two killer features:
  1. topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculus
    Articles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
    • a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
    • a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
    This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
    Figure 1.
    Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page
    . View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivative
  2. local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:
    This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
    Figure 5. . You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.
    Video 3.
    Edit locally and publish demo
    . Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.
  3. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook-media/master/feature/x/hilbert-space-arrow.png
  4. Infinitely deep tables of contents:
    Figure 6.
    Dynamic article tree with infinitely deep table of contents
    .
    Descendant pages can also show up as toplevel e.g.: ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/chordate-subclade
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
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