Finiteness of \(\bigcup_ e \text{Ass}F^ e(M)\) and its connections to tight closure (Q1922062)

Let \(R\) be a commutative Noetherian ring of prime characteristic \(p\) and let \(M\) be an \(R\)-module. In this paper we investigate the sets \(\bigcup_e \text{Ass} F^e (M)\) and \(\bigcup_e \text{Ass} G^e (M)\) where \(F^e( )\) is the Peskine-Szpiro functor and \(G^e (M)\) is \(F^e (M)\) modulo the tight closure of 0 in \(F^e (M)\). We show that if either of these sets has finitely many maximal elements, we can impose some restrictions on a possible counter-example for the commutativity of localization and tight closure. The last section of this paper constructs an example which shows that \(\bigcup_e \text{Ass} F^e (M)\) may have infinitely many maximal elements. The question of whether \(\bigcup_e \text{Ass} G^e (M)\) may have infinitely many maximal elements is still open.