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The Stacks project

A product of ideals is an invertible module iff both factors are.

Lemma 10.120.16. Let A be a ring. Let I and J be nonzero ideals of A such that IJ = (f) for some nonzerodivisor f \in A. Then I and J are finitely generated ideals and finitely locally free of rank 1 as A-modules.

Proof. It suffices to show that I and J are finite locally free A-modules of rank 1, see Lemma 10.78.2. To do this, write f = \sum _{i = 1, \ldots , n} x_ i y_ i with x_ i \in I and y_ i \in J. We can also write x_ i y_ i = a_ i f for some a_ i \in A. Since f is a nonzerodivisor we see that \sum a_ i = 1. Thus it suffices to show that each I_{a_ i} and J_{a_ i} is free of rank 1 over A_{a_ i}. After replacing A by A_{a_ i} we conclude that f = xy for some x \in I and y \in J. Note that both x and y are nonzerodivisors. We claim that I = (x) and J = (y) which finishes the proof. Namely, if x' \in I, then x'y = af = axy for some a \in A. Hence x' = ax and we win. \square


Comments (1)

Comment #3586 by slogan_bot on

Suggested slogan: A product of ideals is a divisor iff each factor is.

(Also: one could improve the statement according to the slogan, only assuming that is locally free of rank .)

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  • 10 comment(s) on Section 10.120: Factorization

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