On the union of increasing chains of torsion-free modules over integral domains (Q1936923)

The author establishes a generalization of the Hill's criterion of freeness for abelian groups to categories \(\mathcal{C}\) of torsion-free modules over integral domains, which are closed with respect to the formation of direct sums, and in which every object can be decomposed into direct sums of objects of \(\mathcal{C}\) of rank at most a fixed limit cardinal number \(\kappa\). Some examples of such categories are the categories of free modules, projective modules, complete decomposable modules, and balanced projective modules. In the main result they show that a module belongs to \({\mathcal{C}}\) if it is the union of a continuous, well-ordered, ascending chain of length \(\kappa\), consisting of pure submodules which are objects of \(\mathcal{C}\). As a consequence, they derive versions of Hill's theorem for some classes of torsion-free modules over domains, and a generalization of a well-known result by \textit{I. Kaplansky} [Ann. Math. (2) 68, 372-377 (1958; Zbl 0083.25802)].