Frobenius and valuation rings (Q738832)

This paper extends results on the behavior of Frobenius to the case of valuation rings of characteristic \(p>0\), which are not generally Noetherian. The main results include Theorem 3.1, which states that Frobenius is faithfully flat on valuation rings of characteristic \(p\). To paraphrase the authors, this result can be viewed as a generalization of the flatness of Frobenius on regular rings. Another result is Corollary 3.3, which states that all valuation rings are F-pure. However, an example is given [Example 4.5.1] of a valuation ring that is not F-split. There is also Theorem 5.1, which states that a valuation ring is F-finite if and only if the valuation is Abhyankar, further connecting these valuation rings to previous work in characteristic \(p\). There are also several results indicating how these ideas play out in the Noetherian case, for discrete valuation rings. The other main topic is the extension of strong F-regularity to non-Noetherian rings. The authors introduce a new notion called F-pure regularity, which is defined on all commutative rings of prime characteristic [Definition 6.1.1]. This notion agrees with Hochster's original definition of strong F-regularity in the Noetherian F-finite case [Remark 6.1.2], and is stronger than the condition that for any pair of modules \(N \subseteq M\), \(N\) is tightly closed in \(M\) (a generalization of strong F-regularity) [Proposition 6.3.2]. Additionally, regular rings are F-pure regular [Theorem 6.2.1]. These results and several others shown in the paper indicate that F-pure regularity shares key properties of strong F-regularity in the non-Noetherian case. It does not appear to be relevant for valuation rings though, since valuation rings are F-pure regular if and only if they are Noetherian [Theorem 6.5.1]. The introduction to this paper includes a discussion of recent work connected to valuation rings, which suggests many applications of the results. The paper also includes proofs of several important background results, making it fairly self-contained.