Structure of irreducible homomorphisms to/from free modules (Q1752940)

Irreducible monomorphisms to finitely generated free modules and irreducible epimorphisms from free finitely generated modules over a commutative noetherian local ring (with maximal ideal \(\mathfrak{m} \)) are the main themes of this paper. Some interesting properties are found, for example, if \(R\) is a Henselian ring and \(\phi : M \rightarrow F\) ( \(F\) free) is an irreducible monomorphism, then the \(R\)-module \(M\) is isomorphic to a direct summand of \(\mathfrak{m}\). On the other hand, if \(\psi : F \rightarrow M\) (\(F\) free) is an irreducible epimorphism and \(\mathrm{End}_{R}(M)\) is a local ring, then for any \(\iota : R \rightarrow F\) which is a split monomorphism, the composition \(\psi \iota : R \rightarrow M\) is irreducible and consequently either surjective or injective. Motivated by the Auslander-Reiten conjecture, these properties are used to find a characterization of a regular ring in terms of self-vanishing of Ext and Tor and projective and injective dimensions being finite, under two conditions concerning indecomposability of \(\mathfrak{m}\) and the existence of irreducible monomorphisms to and epimorphisms from a free module \(F\).