Chinese remainder theorem Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-13
The Chinese remainder theorem says that remainders modulo pairwise coprime positive integers can be specified independently. For pairwise coprime and , every prescribed list determines one congruence class modulo satisfying for all . It determines a class, rather than one unrestricted integer: adding a multiple of preserves every remainder.
For example, combine and . Write from the first condition. The second becomes . Since three has modular inverse two modulo five, , giving . The integers , and all work. The fifteen possibilities modulo fifteen correspond to the fifteen pairs in a three-by-five grid.
Figure 1.
Coprime moduli fill every residue pair; shared factors impose a compatibility condition
. Details.
The theorem also preserves arithmetic: reducing an addition or a multiplication modulo each gives the same tuple as performing that operation on the corresponding congruence classes. In the language of quotient rings, reduction is a ring isomorphism
One large residue is thus an exact encoding of several smaller residues. This is useful for splitting arithmetic into smaller calculations and then reconstructing the result; MIT's modular arithmetic notes develop both the reconstruction and the product representation. [ref] For a concrete multiplication, corresponds to and to modulo . Their componentwise product is , which reconstructs to , agreeing with .
A constructive formula explains the independence. For , put and choose with , using a modular multiplicative inverse. Then is one modulo and zero modulo every other . Therefore
has the desired remainders. A modulus equal to one imposes no restriction and can be omitted. Uniqueness follows because a difference divisible by every is divisible by their product when they are pairwise coprime. This short construction gives a reusable algorithm as well as an existence statement.
The coprime hypothesis explains why every cell in the left grid is attainable. With integer moduli six and eight, a pair must agree modulo their greatest common divisor, two. There are twenty-four compatible pairs, rather than forty-eight arbitrary pairs; each corresponds to a class modulo the least common multiple, twenty-four. The Chinese remainder theorem for noncoprime moduli states the resulting compatibility rule.
For pairwise comaximal ideals in a commutative ring, reduction has the displayed ring isomorphism. The kernel is their intersection, equal to their product. Choose with ; then lifts any prescribed residue tuple. The equality between intersection and product follows from , , , which writes each as .
Isomorphism Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
An isomorphism is a morphism with a two-sided inverse that is also a morphism. Two objects are isomorphic when such a map exists between them. For groups, rings, and vector spaces, a bijective structure-preserving map has a structure-preserving inverse; in other settings the inverse condition needs separate attention, as for a homeomorphism between topological spaces.
For example, is a group isomorphism from the additive integers to the additive even integers. It is bijective onto that target, satisfies , and has inverse . The two groups have the same addition pattern even though they are different sets. It is not a ring isomorphism for their inherited multiplications, since while .
Reducing coefficients modulo gives the ring isomorphism
If , its monic leading coefficient remains one modulo , so . Polynomial division gives a unique representative of degree less than : existence follows by division, and the difference of two such representatives cannot be a nonzero multiple of a degree- monic polynomial. There are choices for each of the coefficients, proving
Irreducibility of is not needed for finiteness; without it the quotient ring need not be a field.
The projections in the Gelfand–Tsetlin algebra satisfy
Consequently the map sending a diagonal element to its scalar on each Gelfand–Tsetlin basis vector is a ring isomorphism
Each factor is a simple module over this algebra, and the algebra is their direct sum as a module over itself. This proves that is a semisimple algebra. The argument uses its explicit diagonal structure; being a subalgebra of a semisimple algebra by itself would not suffice.
The semicubical parabola has coordinate ring
under , . The isomorphism is valid in every characteristic: after division by the monic polynomial in , a remainder maps to a sum of distinct even powers and odd powers at least three, and can vanish only when both polynomials are zero.
Its fraction field contains , which is an integral element over because it satisfies . However , since a polynomial in has no term of degree one. Thus is not an integrally closed domain. The ring of the affine line is a principal ideal domain and therefore an integrally closed domain. This property is preserved by ring isomorphism. By coordinate-ring functoriality,
The parametrization is a bijection on points over an algebraically closed field, but that does not make its inverse a morphism at the cusp.
The Chinese remainder theorem says that if the positive integers are pairwise coprime and , then for arbitrary residue classes there is a unique residue class satisfying
Equivalently, reduction is a ring isomorphism
For existence, put . Pairwise coprimality gives , so Bézout's identity supplies an integer with . Then
has the required residues, because every term except the th is divisible by . If and are two solutions, each divides . Pairwise coprimality then implies that their product divides , proving uniqueness modulo .
Let . Some homogeneous lies outside . Choose with . Since is surjective, for some homogeneous ; primality gives . Thus , and .
Fix a positive-degree homogeneous and write . The map
is surjective: after multiplying the numerator and denominator of any degree-zero fraction by a sufficiently large power of , its numerator has degree at least and therefore lifts through . It is injective by the same device: if maps to zero, then for some , and after increasing the injectivity of in degree gives . Hence the displayed map is a ring isomorphism.
The opens obtained in this way cover , and on every one of them is an isomorphism onto . The inverses agree on overlaps, so is an isomorphism of schemes. This proves the Invariance of Proj under an eventual graded isomorphism.
For , the square-zero ideal condition gives
Thus the square-zero unit subgroup is abelian, and
is a group isomorphism from the additive group of .
Use the specified ring isomorphism . For , choose a lift and define for . Two lifts differ by an element of , whose product with vanishes, so this is well defined. Right multiplication is handled identically. The two actions commute by associativity, making a bimodule. If lifts , then is a unit: a lift of makes both and elements of , hence units, and a ring element with both a left and a right inverse is invertible. Conjugation therefore defines
Changing by an element of does not change this expression because . Moreover,
so is an isomorphism of -modules for these conjugation actions.
Let be reduction on unit groups, and define as the inverse image of the distinguished subgroup . Every has a unit lift by the preceding argument, and the kernel consists exactly of the units congruent to , namely . Multiplication in therefore gives the group extension
Choose a set-theoretic section with . Its extension cocycle
satisfies the two-cocycle identity by associativity. A different section changes by a group coboundary, so second group cohomology classifies group extensions gives a well-defined class
The same construction for gives , an extension cocycle , and .
The answer to the final question is no. An abstract ring isomorphism need not carry the distinguished ideal to , need not induce the identity under the two chosen identifications of the quotient rings with , and need not induce the prescribed -module isomorphism . Hence it need not give an isomorphism of the two displayed group extensions, so it imposes no equality . That equality does hold if the ring isomorphism has all three compatibility properties, because it then carries one extension cocycle to the other up to a group coboundary.