On polyserial modules over valuation domains (Q1092961)

A module M over a valuation domain R (i.e. a commutative domain with a 1 in which the ideals form a chain) is said to be uniserial if its submodules form a chain; and polyserial if it has a pure composition series, i.e. a finite chain of submodules \(0=M_ 0<M_ 1<...<M_ n=M\) such that each \(M_ i\) is pure (in the sense that \(M_ i\cap rM=rM_ i\) for each i) and every quotient module \(M_ i| M_{i-1}\) is uniserial. Various properties of polyserial modules are established. In particular it is shown that not all torsion polyserials are epic images of torsion-free modules of finite rank.