The separable closure of a local ring (Q1270052)

In this paper all rings are commutative and with identity. It is assumed that ring homomorphisms preserve idempotents and that a ring and its subrings have the same identity. If \(S\) is a ring and \(T\) is an extension of \(S\), \(\Aut_ST\) denotes the ring of automorphisms of \(T\) which leave \(S\) fixed. A ring is called connected if it has exactly two idempotents. If \(S\) is a connected ring, then \(\Omega_S\) denotes the separable closure of \(S\). By a local ring is meant a ring (not necessarily Noetherian) with a unique maximal ideal. Throughout the paper \(R\) is a local ring with maximal ideal \(M\). \(R[x] \) denotes a polynomial ring in an indeterminate \(x\) over \(R\). The author shows that if \(S\subseteq\Omega_R\) is a finite projective separable extension of \(R\), then there exists \(\alpha\in\Omega_R\) and \(f\in R[x]\) such that \(f\) is separable and indecomposable in \(R[x]\), \(f(\alpha)=0\), and \(S\subseteq R[\alpha]\). \(R\) is said to be weakly Henselian if every separable indecomposable polynomial in \(R[x]\) remains indecomposable when viewed as a polynomial in \((R/M)[x]\). It has been previously shown that \(R\) is weakly Henselian if and only if \(\Omega_R\) is local. If \(M'\) is a maximal ideal of \(\Omega_R\), \(T=\Omega_R^{D(M')}\), and \(M''= M'\cap T\), where \(D(M')=\{\sigma\in\Aut_RT\mid\sigma(M')=M'\}\) and \(\Omega_R^{D (M')}=\{\alpha\in\Omega_R\mid\sigma(\alpha)=\alpha\) for all \(\sigma\in D(M')\}\), then \(T_{M''}\) (the localization of \(T\) at the maximal ideal \(M'')\) is called a weak Henselization of \(R\). Let \(R^*\) denote a weak Henselization of \(R\). The author shows that if \(S\) is a local domain which is integrally closed in its quotient field and if \(Q'\) is a maximal ideal of \(\Omega_S\), then \(\Omega_{S^*} \simeq(\Omega_S)_{Q'}\). The author also notes that \(R^*\) is a weakly Henselian ring.