The Jacobson radical is , where runs over the maximal right ideals of ; equivalently, it is the intersection of the annihilators of all simple modules. It is a two-sided ideal. A projective module has the lifting property against every surjective R-module homomorphism. A finitely generated module is a projective module precisely when it is a direct summand of a finitely generated free module. An indecomposable module is nonzero and admits no direct sum decomposition into two nonzero submodules.
To calculate the top of an indecomposable projective module, use the right Artinian ring hypothesis, namely the descending chain condition on right ideals. The Hopkins-Levitzki theorem gives finite composition length of the right regular module, hence of its submodule . Also is a nilpotent ideal, and is a semisimple ring. Thus the quotient module is a semisimple module; it is nonzero, since would imply for sufficiently large .
Suppose were not a simple module. A nontrivial direct sum decomposition of this semisimple module would give an idempotent that is neither zero nor the identity. Writing , the lifting property of the projective module gives with . The Fitting lemma for an indecomposable module of finite composition length says that is either invertible or a nilpotent element. Its induced map would then be invertible or a nilpotent element, respectively. Neither is possible for a nontrivial idempotent. Therefore is simple. This argument does not assume that an embedded projective module automatically splits off from the ambient module.
A block of an Artinian algebra is a nonzero two-sided direct summand determined by a primitive central idempotent : cannot be written as a sum of two nonzero orthogonal central idempotents. Its identity is . For a finite-dimensional associative algebra, the blocks of an Artinian algebra give its unique decomposition as a finite product of indecomposable algebras, or equivalently as a direct sum of two-sided ideals.
For the block of S3 in characteristic three, put , , and . The group algebra has basis for . In characteristic three,
Consequently is a two-sided nilpotent ideal, , and . A nilpotent ideal lies in the Jacobson radical, and a quotient that is a semisimple ring forces the reverse inclusion. Hence
Define orthogonal idempotents and . They sum to one, so the right regular module decomposes as
The two summands are the indecomposable projectives of S3 in characteristic three. Each direct summand is a projective module, with basis . Its quotient module modulo multiplication by is one-dimensional: the trivial representation for , and the sign representation for . Each is an indecomposable module, since two nonzero direct summands would each have nonzero quotient module modulo , contradicting its one-dimensional top. For additional detail, the successive factors of the radical series of a module are the trivial representation, sign representation, trivial representation for , and the sign representation, trivial representation, sign representation for . Indeed, modulo the relation reverses the -sign, whereas commutes with .
The center of an associative algebra is spanned by the conjugacy class sums , , and . Since and , this center of an associative algebra is
Its vector subspace is a square-zero ideal. If is a central idempotent, then and . Thus or and . There is no nontrivial central idempotent, so the whole group algebra is its single block. The two three-dimensional projective modules above are a decomposition of the regular module, not two blocks of an Artinian algebra.
A ring is a Noetherian ring if it satisfies the ascending chain condition on ideals: every chain
eventually becomes constant. Equivalently, every ideal has a finite generating set of an ideal. To see this equivalence, if an ideal were not finitely generated, one could repeatedly choose an element outside the ideal generated by the preceding choices, producing a strictly ascending chain. Conversely, the union of an ascending chain is an ideal; if it is generated by finitely many elements, all of them lie in one term of the chain, and every later term equals that term.
A ring is an Artinian ring if it satisfies the descending chain condition on ideals: every chain
eventually becomes constant. These are stabilization conditions on all ideals, not merely on principal ideals.
No. For example, take , any field. It is an Artinian ring, since its only ideals are zero and itself. In the formal power series ring , however,
is a strictly descending chain of ideals. The inclusion is strict because has a nonzero coefficient of , whereas every element of has that coefficient zero. Thus fails the descending chain condition and is not Artinian.
The same argument works for any nonzero coefficient ring : the coefficient in cannot be produced by a multiple of . Therefore is never Artinian when . The zero ring is the harmless exception.
Right Artinian ring 2026-10-05
A ring is right Artinian if its right ideals satisfy the descending chain condition, equivalently its right regular module is an Artinian module. Left and right chain conditions should be distinguished for a general ring.