The quotient. Evaluation , , is a surjective ring homomorphism whose kernel of a ring homomorphism is . Indeed, division by this monic polynomial leaves a remainder , and for forces . Taking the further quotient ring modulo gives the explicit isomorphism
All fibers, including the generic fiber. For a point with residue field , its scheme-theoretic fiber is
At the generic point , the residue field is , and is an irreducible polynomial over , so . For a closed point the residue field is . The permitted criterion for a square root of gives three cases. If , choose with ; the two roots are distinct, so the Chinese remainder theorem gives . If , the quadratic has no root and is an irreducible polynomial, giving the finite field . Finally, in characteristic two, ; setting gives the dual numbers. Thus
The split scheme-theoretic fiber has two closed points, represented by and . The inert scheme-theoretic fiber has one closed point, represented by . The scheme-theoretic fiber over has one closed point, represented by , but is a nonreduced scheme: its nonzero element is nilpotent. These descriptions retain the residue fields and the nilpotent structure, which a count of points alone would lose.
The topology. The printed PDF says that the nonempty proper Zariski closed subsets are finite subsets of . Its points are prime ideals, so the intended set is .
Put . Since is a principal ideal domain, every nonzero prime ideal is a maximal ideal. Each such prime ideal contains a nonzero Gaussian integer , and therefore contains the positive integer . Its contraction to is consequently a nonzero prime ideal , so the scheme-theoretic fibers just computed list all the closed points of . The sole remaining point is the generic point .
Every proper Zariski closed subset is with : if its defining ideal were zero, it would be all of . A nonzero nonunit has a finite unique factorization
Here the are pairwise nonassociate prime elements. Conversely, any finite set of nonzero prime ideals equals ; the empty set is . Therefore
In particular, the closure of the generic point is , and every nonempty open subset contains that generic point and all but finitely many closed points.
A nonidentity automorphism. Complex conjugation
is a ring automorphism fixing . It induces the automorphism over . Since , this is not the identity morphism of schemes. On the generic fiber it is the nontrivial field automorphism of . On a split scheme-theoretic fiber it swaps the two closed points, since maps to . On an inert scheme-theoretic fiber it fixes the only point but induces the nonidentity finite-field Frobenius automorphism on its residue field, because . On the scheme-theoretic fiber over it is the identity on the entire scheme: in , so is fixed. Thus
Put , the ring of invariants. It is an integral domain because it is a subring of the domain . Embed in in the evident way.
Suppose is an integral element over . Its monic equation has coefficients in , so is integral over . Since is a normal domain, .
Write with and . Each ring automorphism in extends to the fraction field by acting on numerator and denominator, and fixes this fraction. Hence . We have proved that is integrally closed in its own fraction field:
This normality of a ring of invariants argument actually works for any group; finiteness is not needed for this conclusion. For finite , there is additionally an integral extension , since for each the orbit polynomial under a finite automorphism group
is monic, has coefficients fixed by and vanishes at . Neither argument divides by , so it is valid when the characteristic divides the group order. Here normality means integral closedness of a domain.
A Noetherian ring is a ring whose ideals satisfy the ascending chain condition; equivalently every ideal is finitely generated. For the surjective ring endomorphism, put . The ascending chain of ideals stabilizes, say . If , surjectivity of gives with . Then , so and . The endomorphism is therefore injective, hence a ring automorphism.
The nilradical is the ideal
For example, if , the binomial expansion gives ; multiplication by any ring element also preserves nilpotence. Every prime ideal contains each nilpotent element, since implies . Conversely, if is not nilpotent, the multiplicative subset avoids . By Zorn's lemma, choose an ideal maximal among those disjoint from this subset. It is a prime ideal: if but neither factor is in , then and both meet the subset, and multiplying their two witnesses puts a power of in , a contradiction. This prime ideal excludes . Hence
For the zero ring the empty intersection is the whole ring, as required.
Here is a finite prime-intersection representation of a radical argument that does not assume the result. In a Noetherian ring, suppose some ideal has ideal radical not expressible as a finite intersection of prime ideals, and choose such a maximal by the ascending chain condition. It is proper and cannot be prime. Choose with . The two larger ideals and have finite prime-intersection radicals, and
Indeed, if and , then . This contradicts the choice of . Applying the result to proves that is the intersection of finitely many prime ideals. Empty intersections handle the unit ideal.
For reducedness of a formal power series ring, the inclusion of constants gives one implication: a nonzero nilpotent element of remains nonzero and nilpotent in . For the other, let be a reduced ring and take a nonzero formal power series with . The coefficient of in is , because is reduced. Thus is not nilpotent. Therefore
No Noetherian ring hypothesis is needed for this argument.
For a nilradical that is not nilpotent, take
Every element of this ideal uses finitely many variables and is nilpotent: an element using variables lies in an ideal whose st power is zero. The quotient by this ideal is the field , so it is exactly the nilradical. Nevertheless for every , because the square-free monomials form a vector space basis. Thus for all .
Take . We first check that this noncommutative formal power series ring is a noncommutative domain. For nonzero , let be the smallest lengths of words with nonzero coefficients in , respectively. Their degree- and degree- parts are nonzero homogeneous polynomials in the free associative algebra.
Choose words with nonzero coefficients in . In , the coefficient of is the product of those two coefficients: a word of length has a unique splitting into a prefix of length and a suffix of length . This product is nonzero in . The degree- part of is exactly , since all lower parts of and vanish. Thus , proving that is a noncommutative domain.
By the defining property of the free associative algebra, there is a ring homomorphism
The same substitution defines a ring automorphism of , with inverse , . Composing this ring automorphism with the natural inclusion proves that is injective.
Finally,
Their constant terms are , respectively, all nonzero. By the unit criterion for noncommutative formal power series proved in c, all four elements are units. Therefore and have every required property. The embedding changes the images of the generators, so the failure of the original monomial left Ore set in b presents no obstruction.
Ring endomorphism 2026-10-06
A ring homomorphism from a ring to itself. Surjectivity need not imply injectivity in general, but a surjective ring endomorphism of a Noetherian ring is a ring automorphism.
Ring of invariants Created 2026-10-07 Updated 2026-10-14
For a group acting on a ring by ring automorphisms, the elements fixed by every group element form a subring containing . For finite acting on a commutative ring, each satisfies the monic orbit equation , whose coefficients are fixed. Thus is integral over its invariant subring. This uses an orbit product, not division by the group order.
Surjective endomorphism of a Noetherian ring is an automorphism Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-14
For a surjective ring endomorphism of a Noetherian ring, the ascending kernel chain stabilizes. If and , choose with . Then , so . Thus the endomorphism is a ring automorphism.