The valuation ring is , and is an ideal by the ultrametric inequality. Its complement inside consists exactly of elements of field absolute value one, whose inverses also lie in . Every proper ideal must avoid units and hence lie in . Therefore is the unique maximal ideal: is a local ring. Also its fraction field is , since every nonzero element outside the ring has its inverse inside it.
If is integral over , it satisfies a monic equation with . Were , the leading term would have strictly larger field absolute value than every other term, so the ultrametric inequality would prevent cancellation to zero. Thus , proving the valuation ring is integrally closed.
For the ideal criterion, assume the valuation is nontrivial and write . If its value group is discrete, normalize it to and choose a uniformizer of valuation one. In any nonzero ideal , the nonnegative integer valuations have a least value . Choose of that value. For every , , so . Hence and is a principal ideal domain.
Conversely, if is a principal ideal domain, its nonzero maximal ideal is . For every element of positive valuation, implies with , so . Thus is the least positive value. For any value , subtract . The remainder belongs to the value group and lies in , so is zero. The value group is therefore , and the valuation is discrete. We have proved the principal ideal criterion for a nontrivial rank-one valuation ring.
The nontriviality qualification matters under the standard definition of discrete valuation, which requires value group isomorphic to . With the trivial field absolute value, is still a principal ideal domain, but the value group is zero and there is no uniformizer. Thus the literal unrestricted equivalence has a field exception. If “discrete” instead includes the trivial value group as a discrete subgroup of , that exceptional case satisfies the equivalence too.