Endomorphism rings, power series rings, and serial modules (Q1971747)

This article is a survey on the most important results about the rings and modules indicated in the title. It is closely related to the previous surveys of the author and \textit{A. V. Mikhalev} [ibid. 93, No. 2, 149-253 (1999; Zbl 0928.16003), ibid. 94, No. 6, 1888-1924 (1999; Zbl 0938.16018), ibid. 95, No. 4, 2421-2462 (1999; Zbl 0937.16002)] on distributive and semidistributive rings and modules. After some preliminary facts (Part 1), regular rings and modules are studied (Part 2), including the characterizations of regular rings, strongly regular rings, countably injective rings and spectral modules. In the following section (Part 3) the main subjects are: endodistributive modules, multiplication modules, strongly indecomposable modules, cancellation property, as well as some applications to commutative rings and maximal rings of quotients. Part 4 is concerned with the study of different kinds of series rings: uniserial, reduced, Rickart, distributive and Bézout series rings. In parallel the polynomial and Laurent series rings are considered. In the final Part 5 the results about serial rings and modules are expounded: the theorems of Drozd-Warfield (characterization of serial rings by finitely presented modules), of G. Ivanov (when all finitely generated modules are serial), and of Nakayama-Skornyakov (on serial Artinian rings). Some facts on serial hereditary rings are also included in this part.