For a ring homomorphism , extension of scalars takes an invertible module to an invertible -module. A direct-summand presentation in a finite free module remains a direct-summand presentation after tensoring. At a prime contracting to , localization gives . Compatibility with tensor products, identities and composition makes the Picard group of a ring a covariant functor.
Change of rings Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-14
Changing the coefficient ring of a module along a ring homomorphism can mean restriction of scalars, extension of scalars, or coextension of scalars. The underlying module may be retained with a smaller ring action, or replaced by a tensor or Hom construction with the new ring.
The diagonal maps are extension of scalars; the maps to are differences. The connecting map sends to the difference of its patched free module and the corresponding free -module. Elementary lifting and common free stabilization prove exactness at every internal term. The displayed fragment does not assert injectivity at its first term or surjectivity at its last.
A compatible triple patches to . It is finitely generated projective and recovers after extension of scalars. For free modules glued by , the block identity lifts through the surjective side and makes the direct sum with inverse gluing free. Complements reduce general projective triples to that free case. Conversely an idempotent over is exactly a compatible pair of idempotents over its two factors.
Use finitely generated right projective modules throughout. The group K0 of a ring is the Grothendieck group of their direct-sum monoid, with . The group K1 of a ring is , equivalently the abelianization of the stable general linear group. Stabilization is ; is generated by elementary transvections. The stable elementary subgroup is the commutator subgroup: elementary transvections are commutators using a third index, and stable block interchange and elementary row identities make the quotient abelian.
Write for the lower-right ring, printed as in the source. A Milnor square has unital commuting maps, is a pullback
and has at least one of surjective. Interchange the two sides if necessary so that is surjective.
We first establish the patching fact used in the proof. For projective and an isomorphism , set
For free modules denote the result by . The block matrix identity
expresses as elementary matrices. Their entries lift through , and their elementary lifts remain invertible. A change of basis on the first side then trivializes this gluing. Thus , proving that is finitely generated projective. Notice that we lifted elementary matrices, not arbitrary invertible matrices.
For general , choose and . The reductions of and are isomorphic: insert the common reduced and reorder the two complements. Patch them by such an isomorphism. The sum with now patches two free modules of equal size, so is projective by the free case, making each summand projective. The same free change of basis followed by these direct-summand projections shows that extension to recovers . Conversely, write an -projective as the image of an idempotent over a finite free module. Since matrices over the pullback are compatible pairs of matrices, applying the compatible idempotents to the free pullback reconstructs this projective from its two reductions. Compatible module isomorphisms patch as well. This proves Milnor patching of projective modules in the form needed below.
The diagonal maps in the sequence are extension of scalars; the two maps to are differences . Define the connecting map by
It is unchanged by stabilization or elementary multiplication: an elementary factor lifts through and changes a free basis in the gluing. The identity and the preceding elementary factorization show after matching sizes. Thus is an additive homomorphism on .
Exactness at . If the two reduced classes agree, choose stabilized representatives of the same size. Their reductions differ by an elementary matrix over . Lift to an elementary matrix over and adjust without changing its class. Its reduction now equals that of . The compatible pair and its compatible inverse give an invertible matrix over , so the original pair of classes is in the diagonal image. The reverse containment follows from commutativity of the square.
Exactness at . A gluing obtained from a change of basis over either upper ring patches a free module, so the difference-map image is killed by . Conversely, means that becomes free after adding a common projective summand. Add a complement of that summand to obtain an actual isomorphism . Its two local bases express . Therefore , which lies in the image of the difference map. This uses stable equality of projective classes, not cancellation of arbitrary projectives.
Exactness at . Connecting classes reduce to zero on both sides. Conversely, write a class in the kernel as by adding a complement to its negative projective term. Its reductions have the same classes as . Equality in becomes an isomorphism after a finite common free summand, by taking a complement to the auxiliary projective. Use one sufficiently large free summand on both sides. The stabilized is then locally free with gluing , so the original class is .
Exactness at . Write a kernel pair as , using complements and padding to make the free sizes equal. Their reduced positive classes agree. Adding a common finite free summand makes those reductions isomorphic. Patch the resulting projectives, and subtract the matching free -module. Its restrictions are the desired pair. The reverse containment is immediate because both reductions to agree.
These arguments prove the Mayer-Vietoris sequence in algebraic K-theory
No zero is inserted at either end; this fragment does not assert injectivity at the first term or surjectivity at the last.
For the group ring of the cyclic group, take the cyclotomic Milnor square
The maps send the cyclic generator to and to ; the lower map sets , and the right map reduces modulo . Since , . To verify the pullback, represent an element by a polynomial of degree at most . If both evaluations vanish, it is a constant multiple of the minimal polynomial of an algebraic element , and evaluation at one forces that constant to be zero. Conversely, represent by of degree below . For a compatible integer , is divisible by ; replacing by yields the pair . The right map is surjective, so this is a Milnor square.
The hinted cyclotomic units are . If with , the geometric sum is their inverse, because . Their residues are , covering every unit of the common field. Gaussian elimination identifies with by determinant. Thus is surjective, and the connecting map vanishes.
The remaining exact sequence injects into , with image . Here , and reduction of a projective over the integral domain has dimension its rank: localize at , where the projective is free, and compare its residue-field dimension with its fraction-field dimension. Projection onto the second factor is therefore a bijection on this kernel. Hence extension along the cyclotomic evaluation gives
The essential step is reduction of cyclotomic units at the ramified prime; surjectivity of a ring map alone would not imply surjectivity on .
Here the usual homological algebra convention is that the right-exact functor is additive. Module categories have enough projective modules, because any module is a quotient of a free module. Choose a projective resolution
Apply to the unaugmented chain complex and define the left derived functors by
Additivity ensures that preserves zero maps, sums of maps and homotopy identities, so the transformed differentials still compose to zero.
For a module homomorphism , lift it to a chain map between chosen projective resolutions. In degree zero, lift through using projectivity of . In each higher degree, the already constructed map lands in the next kernel; exactness of and projectivity of supply the next lift. Any two lifts are chain homotopic: their degree-zero difference lands in , so it lifts to . Inductively lift the remaining difference after subtracting the preceding homotopy term. This gives
Applying preserves this identity, so the lifts induce the same homology map. Identity lifts and composable lifts show that is a functor. Comparison lifts between two resolutions over the identity of are inverse up to chain homotopy; hence the construction is independent of the chosen resolution up to its canonical natural isomorphism.
Right exactness identifies naturally with . For a projective module , the length-zero resolution gives for . For a short exact sequence , the horseshoe lemma builds a degreewise split short exact sequence of projective resolutions. Concretely, lift the projective generators covering into and combine them with generators covering ; repeat on the kernels. The middle projective term in each degree is the direct sum of the two outer ones. An additive functor preserves these split sequences, and lifting cycles, taking their differentials and returning to the subcomplex produces the connecting maps in
This is the natural long exact derived-functor sequence. In particular, if has projective, then for , and . These are dimension-shifting formulas. Positive degrees can be killed by the surjection . If is exact, it preserves every resolution's exactness and all its positive left derived functors vanish. Conversely, if vanishes on all modules, the displayed long exact sequence makes exact. A natural transformation between additive right-exact functors induces transformations on the left derived functors by applying it termwise.
For extension of scalars , these derived functors are the Tor functors . When and is a non-zero-divisor, there is the length-one free resolution
Although the construction above resolves , one may instead use this resolution of . To justify that calculation, tensor a free resolution of with the two-term resolution of to form a double complex. Taking homology first along the resolution of leaves ; taking it first along the resolution of leaves . The free terms preserve exactness under tensoring. The double complex is first-quadrant with finitely many terms on each total diagonal, so both filtrations compute the same total homology. This proves the required balancing directly.
The kernel and cokernel of multiplication by now give Tor for a principal non-zero-divisor quotient:
These are naturally -modules. For , the degree-one group is zero; for , multiplication by is zero and both degrees zero and one are . Thus, when , degree one explicitly detects the failure of this base-change functor to be exact.