Let , let act on through , and write for the extension of an ideal generated by . Since , the fiber ring has the canonical presentations
The first isomorphism sends to modulo . Its inverse sends the class of to . The tensor balancing relation, reduction modulo and the fraction relations show that these maps are well-defined and inverse. Thus the description is canonical and does not depend on chosen representatives.
Suppose is a prime ideal of with . Then and is disjoint from . Its localization is a proper prime, since the quotient is the localization of the integral domain . It contains , and therefore gives a prime
Conversely, for a prime , take its contraction under the ring homomorphism , . Contraction preserves primality. Every with maps to zero, while every with maps to a unit and hence cannot belong to a proper prime. Thus .
These constructions are inverse. For a prime disjoint from , the fraction belongs to its localized extension exactly when some has ; primality then implies . In the other direction, every element of has a representative , and membership in is equivalent to membership of because the denominator is a unit. Hence is recovered by extending its contraction and quotienting. We have proved the canonical fiber of the map on spectra correspondence:
If a denominator maps to zero, the fiber ring is the zero ring and both sets are empty; the same argument includes this case.
Choose algebra generators for over . Because the extension is integral, each satisfies a monic equation
Repeatedly reduce any exponent at least using this equation. Since the generators commute, every polynomial in them becomes an -linear combination of the finitely many monomials
Thus is a finitely generated module over , with at most generators. This proves the relevant subalgebra generated by finitely many integral elements assertion rather than merely invoking it.
For a fixed prime ideal , form the fiber ring . Tensoring the finite generating list shows : its pure tensors with one span the fiber over the residue field . Part (b) therefore gives only finitely many primes in . By the canonical bijection in part (a), these are precisely the primes of contracting to . Hence
No Noetherian hypothesis on is needed. For an empty algebra-generating list, and the empty product gives the same conclusion.
The claim fails for a general extension. If is an infinite field, all the infinitely many maximal ideals of contract to in .
It still fails for an integral extension. Take a finite field and
Every satisfies the monic equation , so is integral over the diagonal copy of . The coordinate kernels are infinitely many distinct maximal ideals, all lying over .
The claim is true for a module-finite ring extension. The primes above correspond to the primes of the fiber ring
This is a finite-dimensional algebra over the residue field , hence an Artinian ring, and an Artinian ring has only finitely many prime ideals.