Complexes acyclic up to integral closure

Extract

In [R] D. Rees introduced the notions of reduction and integral closure for modules over a commutative Noetherian ring and proved the following remarkable result. Let R be a locally quasi-unmixed Noetherian ring and I an ideal generated by n elements. Suppose that height (I) = h. Then the ith module of cycles in the Koszul complex on a set of n generators for I is contained in the integral closure of the ith module of boundaries for i > n − h. This result should be considered a dimension-theoretic analogue of the famous depth sensitivity property of the Koszul complex demonstrated by Serre and Auslander-Buschsbaum in the 1950s. At roughly the same time, Hoschster and Huneke introduced the notion of tight closure and thereafter gave a number of theorems in the same (though considerably broader) vein for tight closure. In particular, in [HH] they showed that if R is an equidimensional local ring of characteristic p > 0, which is a homomorphic image of a Gorenstein ring, then for all i > 0, the ith module of cycles is contained in the tight closure of the ith module of boundaries for any complex satisfying the so-called standard rank and height conditions (see the definitions below). Since the tight closure is contained in the integral closure for such rings, the result of Hochster and Huneke extends (in characteristic p) considerably the result of Rees. In fact, their result could be considered a dimension-theoretic analogue of the Buchsbaum-Eisenbud exactness theorem ([BE]), which in a certain sense is the ultimate depth sensitivity theorem. Moreover, using the technique of reduction to characteristic p, Hochster and Huneke have shown that their results hold in equicharacteristic zero as well, whenever the tight closure is defined.