Covering classes and uniserial modules (Q827023)

Let \(R\) be a ring with identity element. Let \(N_R\) and \(M_R\) be two \(R\)-modules and let \(X\) be a generating set of Hom(\(N_R, M_R\)). A family \(\left\{s_x |x\in X\right\}\) of elements of \(S=\mathrm{End}(N_R)\) is said to be summable if, for every \(n \in N_R ,s_x (n) \neq 0\) only for finitely many \(x \in X\). \(X\subset\mathrm{Hom}(N_R,M_R) \) weakly generates \(\mathrm{Hom}(N_R, M_R) \) if any element \(g\in \mathrm{Hom}(N_R, M_R)\) can be written as \(\sum_{x \in X}x s_x\) for some summable family \(\left\{s_x |x\in X\right\}\) of elements in \(S\). \(X\) is a minimal weakly generating set for \(\mathrm{Hom}(N_R, M_R)\) if no element \(x \in X\) can be weakly generated by \(X - \left\{x\right\}\). For \(M_R\), let \(\mathrm{Add}(M_R)\) denote the class of all right \(R\)-modules that are isomorphic to a direct summand of a direct sum \(M_{R}^{(I)}\) of copies of \(M_R\). \( U_R\) is a uniserial \(R\)-module, if its submodules are totally ordered by inclusion. The authors of this paper apply the concept of minimal weakly generating sets to study the existence of \(\mathrm{Add}(U_R)\)-covers for a uniserial module \(U_R\). If \(U_R\) is a uniserial right module over a ring R, then \(S=\mathrm{End}(U_R) \) has at most two maximal (right, left, two-sided) ideals: one is the set \(I\) of all endomorphisms that are not injective, and the other is the set \(K\) of all endomorphisms of \(U_R\) that are not surjective. They prove that if \(U_R\) is either finitely generated, or Artinian, or \(I \subset K\), then the class \(\mathrm{Add}(U_R)\) is covering if and only if it is closed under direct limit. Moreover, they study endomorphism rings of Artinian uniserial modules and they provided several examples.