Galois theory of commutative rings revisited (Q1368019)

In Mem. Am. Math. Soc. 52, 15-33 (1965; Zbl 0143.05902), \textit{S. U. Chase}, \textit{D. K. Harrison} and \textit{A. Rosenberg} developed a Galois theory for commutative ring extensions \(S\supset R\) under the assumption that \(S\) is separable as an \(R\)-algebra and finitely generated and projective as an \(R\)-module, and the elements of the Galois group \(G\) are pairwise strongly distinct \(R\)-automorphisms of \(S\). Recently \textit{A. W. M. Dress} [Adv. Math. 110, No. 1, 129-140 (1995; Zbl 0826.16032)] showed that a simplification of Galois theory for fields is possible by combining Dedekind's lemma with some elementary facts on \(G\)-sets. Dedekind's lemma states that for a field extension \(L\) of a field \(K\) the set \(\text{Alg}_K (A,L)\) of all \(K\)-algebra homomorphisms of a \(K\)-algebra \(A\) into \(L\) is a linearly independent subset of the \(L\)-vector space \(\Hom_K (A,L)\). It turns out that strongly distinct homomorphisms of separable algebras are the kind of homomorphisms which satisfy a version of Dedekind's lemma. This simple remark is the starting point of this paper, and from this point of view, is not surprising that the approach by A. W. Dress (loc. cit.) can also be used to obtain the main results on Galois theory of commutative rings. Section 1 is an introductory section. In sections 2 and 3 we give new proofs for several known results which are simpler than the proofs in former papers, including a proof of the fundamental theorem of Galois theory given in the paper by S. U. Chase, D. K. Harrison and A. Rosenberg cited above. -- The main result in section 4 is a theorem giving several equivalent conditions for a faithfully projective \(R\)-algebra to be self-split.