Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 ib Paper 2 11G b iii Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
Suppose were a product of irreducible elements of . Since degree of a polynomial is additive under products, exactly one factor has positive degree and all the others are constant. By the preceding classification, the positive-degree factor has constant term , while every constant irreducible is for a prime . Their product therefore has a nonzero constant term, contradicting .
Thus is not a product of irreducibles, so this integral domain is not an atomic domain and in particular is not a unique factorization domain.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 iii Paper 148 3 Solution 2026-10-03
The Krull principal ideal theorem states that if is Noetherian and is minimal among the primes containing a proper principal ideal , thenSuppose otherwise that . Quotient by and localize at ; it is enough to consider a Noetherian local domain whose maximal ideal is the only prime containing and which has .
For , putThis is a -primary ideal. Since is a zero-dimensional Noetherian ring, it is Artinian, and the descending chain eventually stabilizes. Thus, for all sufficiently large , every can be writtenNow , while ; -primaryness gives . HenceThe Nakayama lemma applied to gives . Localizing at makes all sufficiently large powers of the nonzero maximal ideal equal. A nonzero element of the stable power then belongs to , contradicting the Krull intersection theorem. This proves the theorem.
Now let be a Noetherian integral domain. If is a unique factorization domain and has height one, choose and an irreducible factor of . In a UFD, is prime, soHeight one forces .
Conversely, suppose every height-one prime is principal. Noetherianity makes an atomic domain. Given an irreducible element , choose a prime minimal over . The principal ideal theorem gives , so by hypothesis. Since and is irreducible, is a unit; hence is prime. Thus every irreducible is a prime element, and an atomic domain with this property is a UFD. Therefore