Matlis duals of local cohomology modules and their endomorphism rings (Q992019)

In some recent works, the structure of the endomorphism rings of local cohomology modules has been taken in consideration. In this paper, the author proves some results regarding the endomorphism rings of local cohomology modules and their Matlis duals. Let \(R\) be a local Noetherian ring. To simplify the statements, let us assume that \(R\) is complete, albeit the results in the paper are stated without such an assumption. Let \(E\) denote the injective hull of the residue field of \(R\), and let \(D(\cdot)=\Hom_R(\cdot ,E)\) be the Matlis duality functor from the category of \(R\)-modules to itself. It is easy to show that the natural map \(M\rightarrow D(D(M))\) is injective for any \(R\)-module \(M\). Thus, the induced map \(\Hom_R(M,M)\rightarrow \Hom_R(D(M),D(M))\) is injective too. If \(M\) is finitely generated or Artinian, Matlis duality guarantees that the above homomorphisms are actually isomorphisms, but this is not true for general modules. For instance, if \(c\) is the grade of an ideal \(I\subseteq R\), the natural homomorphism \(H_I^c(R)\rightarrow D(D(H_I^c(R)))\) is an isomorphism if and only if either \(c=0\) or \(\dim R/I =0\). The author shows that instead, quite surprisingly, the induced map \[ \Hom_R(H_I^c(R),H_I^c(R))\longrightarrow \Hom_R(D(H_I^c(R)),D(H_I^c(R))) \tag{iso} \] is an isomorphism. To get this result the author gives a new characterization of the grade of an ideal, namely \[ \text{grade} I = \inf \{n\in \mathbb{Z} \;: \;\text{Tor}_n^R(R/I,E)\neq 0\}. \] In particular, the isomorphism (ref {iso}) implies that \(R\cong \Hom_R(H_I^c(R),H_I^c(R))\) if and only if \(R\cong \Hom_R(D(H_I^c(R)),D(H_I^c(R)))\). So the previously known sufficient conditions under which one or the other isomorphism holds true can actually be glued. Moreover, the author shows that the above isomorphisms holding true is in turn equivalent to the fact that the natural map \(H_I^c(R)\otimes D(H_I^c(R))\rightarrow E\) is an isomorphism.