On the spectrum of rings of functions (Q1742999)

The author studies the prime spectrum of a ring of functions using ultrafilters. Let \(D\) be a commutative integral domain, and let \(E\) be a subset of \(D\). A \textit{ring of functions} from \(E\) to \(D\) is defined as a subring \(\mathcal R\) of \(D^E\) containing the ring of constant functions in \(D^E\) (which are identified with the elements of \(D\)). If \(\mathcal F\) is a filter on \(E\), then the ideal \(I_{\mathcal F}\) of \(\mathcal R\) is defined as the set of all functions \(f\in \mathcal R\) such that \(f^{-1}(I)\in \mathcal F\). If \(I\) is a prime ideal and \(\mathcal F\) is an ultrafilter, then the ideal \(I_{\mathcal F}\) of \(\mathcal R\) is prime. The author's starting point is Chabert's Theorem on maximal ideals in the ring of integer--valued polynomials Int\((D)\) for a Noetherian one-dimensional domain \(D\). Here are for example two results related to this theorem that are included in this paper: \(\bullet\) Let \(\mathcal R = \mathcal R(E, D)\) be a ring of functions, and let \(M\) be a maximal ideal of \(D\). If every function in \(\mathcal R\) takes values in just finitely many residue classes of \(M\) (in particular, if \(D/M\) is finite), then the prime ideals of \(\mathcal R\) containing \(\mathcal R(E, M)=\{f\in \mathcal R\mid f(E)\subseteq M\}\) are exactly the ideals of the form \(M_{\mathcal U}\) with \(\mathcal U\) an ultrafilter on \(E\). All these prime ideals are maximal. \(\bullet\) Let \(D\) be a domain and let \(P\) be a finitely generated prime ideal of \(D\) that is a minimal prime of a non-zero principal ideal. Let \(\mathcal R\subseteq D^E\) be a divisible ring of functions (that is, if \(f\in \mathcal R\), \(c\in R\setminus \{0\}\) and \(f(E)\subseteq cR\), then \({f\over c}\in \mathcal R\)). Then every prime ideal \(\mathcal Q\) of \(\mathcal R\) with \(\mathcal Q \cap D = P\) contains \(\mathcal R\).