The height of a prime ideal is the supremum of the lengths of strict chains of prime ideals ending at :
The last equality follows from the prime ideal correspondence for localization. Here is a length-growth proof of the Krull height theorem that makes the bound explicit.
We first establish a prime-chain lower bound for local length. For a Noetherian local ring admitting a prime chain of length , put . Then
for some . For , use . For , quotient by the first prime ideal of the chain; this only decreases and reduces us to a local integral domain with
Take and put . It has a prime chain of length , so induction bounds below by a positive multiple of .
The Artin-Rees lemma applied to gives, for a fixed integer ,
Because is a non-zero-divisor, the first term in the exact sequence
has length at least . Hence
Iterate this inequality about times, while its arguments remain at least . This gives the desired positive multiple of . The particular Artin-Rees lemma inclusion used here follows directly from finite generation: the Rees algebra is Noetherian, by the Hilbert basis theorem, and its graded submodule has finitely many homogeneous generators. A bound on their degrees gives .
Now localize at the given minimal prime ideal . Write , , and . The only prime ideal of containing is , so . Since is finitely generated, some . Thus has finite module length, say . The ideal is generated by at most elements.
For , products of these generators give a surjection from copies of onto . Summing the lengths gives the generator bound for primary-ideal length
Since , we have , and therefore
The prime-chain lower bound for local length now excludes any chain of length greater than . Consequently
For , minimality over the zero ideal says that is a minimal prime ideal, so its height is zero. This also handles that boundary case.