On birational Macaulayfications and Cohen-Macaulay canonical modules (Q1883037)

The paper under review investigates local domains that admit a birational Macaulayfication: for a local domain \(A\) a Macaulayfication is a finitely generated \(A\)-algebra \(B\) which is a birational extension of \(A\) and a Cohen-Macaulay ring. Using a spectral sequence argument and the dualizing complex, the author proves that for a local domain \(A\) that is a homomorphic image of a Gorenstein ring a birational Macaulayfication of \(A\) exists if and only if the canonical module of \(A\) is Cohen-Macaulay. Furthermore, the paper contains results on the canonical module \(K(M)\) of a finitely generated module \(M\) over a local ring \(A\) admitting a dualizing complex. The author studies when the canonical module \(K(M)\) is Cohen-Macaulay. In this paper, such modules \(M\) are called canonically Cohen-Macaulay and their general properties are studied. It is proven that whenever \(A\) is local domain, \(K(A)\) is Cohen-Macaulay if and only if the \(S_2\)-ification of \(A\) is Cohen-Macaulay. The final section contains a study of these notions in the case of simplicial affine semigroup rings.