On the structure of couniform and complemented modules (Q1181463)

Let \(R\) be a commutative Noetherian ring, \(M\) an \(R\)-module and \(U\) a submodule of \(M\). While Zorn's lemma shows that the set \(\{V\mid V\) is a submodule of \(M\) with \(U\cap V=0\}\) has maximal elements, the ``dual'' set \(\{V\mid V\) is a submodule of \(M\) with \(U+V=M\}\) need not have minimal elements (as may be seen by taking \(R=M=\mathbb{Z}\) and \(U\) any proper, nonzero ideal of \(\mathbb{Z})\). Call a minimal element of this last set, if it exists, a complement of \(U\) in \(M\) and say that \(M\) is complemented if every submodule \(U\) of \(M\) has a complement. Complemented modules were studied in a series of papers by \textit{H. Zöschinger} who showed that one can reduce the description of complemented \(R\)-modules to the simpler case of radical modules over local rings. One of the aims of this paper is to describe such modules explicitly. It is shown that over a local ring a complemented \(R\)-module \(M\) is a sum of a discrete module and a minimax module \(N\) (i.e., \(N\) has a finitely generated submodule \(U\) with \(N/U\) Artinian). In fact, this last condition of being such a sum is equivalent to \(M\) being weakly complemented (for every submodule \(U\) of \(M\), there is a submodule \(V\) of \(M\) such that \(U+V=M\) and \(U\cap V\) is small in \(M)\). The paper also contains many other interesting results on complemented modules, couniform modules \(M\) (i.e., every strict submodule of \(M\) is small in \(M)\), and totally complemented modules \(M\) (i.e., every submodule of \(M\) is complemented).