On a question of Moshe Roitman and Euler class of stably free module (Q2097273)

In this paper all rings are commutative noetherian with unity and all projective modules are finitely generated of constant rank. The question mentioned in the title is the following: If \(A\) is a ring of Krull dimension \(d\), and \(P\) is a projective module of rank \(\le d\) over the polynomial ring \(A[T]\), such that \(P_{f}\) contain a unimodular element for some monic polynomial \(f\in A[T]\), does \(P\) contains a unimodular element? Recall that an element \(p\in P\) is unimodular, if there exists a homomorphism \(\phi\in\mathrm{Hom}(P,A)\) such that \(\phi(p)=1\). The set of unimodular elements of \(P\) is denoted by Um\((P)\). The authors study three closely interrelated topics: existence of a unimodular element, lifting of surjections, and Euler class groups. Here is the main result on the first topic, following the authors' abstract: Let \(A\) be a ring of Krull dimension \(d\), that contains an infinite field \(k\). Let \(P\) be a projective module of rank \(n\) over the polynomial ring \(A[T_{1}, \dots, T_{r}]\). If \(P_{f}\) contains a unimodular element for some monic polynomial \(f(T_{r})\in A[T_{1},\dots, T_{r-1}][T_{r}]\), then \(P\) contains a unimodular element under each of the following three conditions: \begin{itemize} \item[1.] \(2n \ge d + 3\), and \(P\) is extended from \(A\). \item[2.] \(2n \ge d + 3\), and the singular locus of Spec \((A)\) is a closed set \(V (J)\) with ht\(J \ge d-n+2\). \item[3.] \(2n \ge d + 2\), \(P\) is extended from \(A\), and \(A\) is an affine \(\overline{F_{p}}\)-algebra. \end{itemize} In the proof of the preceding result, the authors use their generalization of the Mandal-Murthy lifting theorem: (Theorem 4.1.) Let \(A\) be an affine \(\overline{F_{p}}\)-algebra of dimension \(d\ge 2\) and \(I, L\) be ideals of \(A\) with \(L\subseteq I^{2}\). Let \(P\) be a projective \(A\)-module of rank \(d\) and \(\phi : P\twoheadrightarrow I/L\) be a surjection. Then \(\phi\) can be lifted to a surjection \(\Phi : P\twoheadrightarrow I\). Recall that the \(n\)th Euler class group \(E^{n}(A)\) of a ring \(A\) of dimension \(d\) was defined by Bhatwadekar-Sridharan for \(n\ge \frac {d+3} {2}\): an element of \(E^{n}(A)\) is an ordered pair \((I, \omega_{I})\), where \(I\subseteq A\) is an ideal of height \( n\) and \(\omega_{I} : (A/I)\twoheadrightarrow I/I^{2}\) is a surjection. Assume that \(A\) is a ring of dimension \(d\) containing a field \(k\), \(n\) is an integer with \(2n \ge d + 3\) such that the singular locus of Spec\((A)\) is a closed set \(V (J)\) with ht\(J \ge d - n + 2\). Under these conditions, as a particular case of a more general result, the authors associate with every stably free \(A\) (resp., \( A[T]\)) module \(Q\) (resp., \(P\)) of rank \(n\), an element \(e(Q)\in E^{n}(A)\) (resp. \(e(P) \in E^{n}(A[T]))\). Moreover, they prove in this setting, for \(P\) and \(Q\) as above: \begin{itemize} \item[1.] Um\((Q)\ne \emptyset\) if and only if \(e(Q) = 0\) in \(E^{n} (A)\). \item[2.] If the field \(k\) is infinite, then Um\((P)\ne \emptyset\) if and only if \(e(P) = 0\) in \(E^{n}(A[T])\). \end{itemize} Extending results due to Das-Sridharan, and assuming that the field \(k\) is infinite, the authors prove in the above setting: \begin{itemize} \item[1.] If \(I \subseteq A[T]\) is an ideal of height \(n\), and \(\omega_{I} : (A[T]/I)^{n}\twoheadrightarrow A[T]/I^{2}\) is a surjection, then the element \((I, \omega_{I}) \in E^{n}(A[T])\) is zero if and only if the surjection \(\omega_{I}\) can be lifted to a surjection \(A[T]^{n}\twoheadrightarrow I\). \item[2.] If the field \(k\) is infinite, then the following sequence of Euler class groups is exact, where \(\mathfrak m\) runs over all the maximal ideals of \(A\): \(0\to E^{n}(A) \to E^{n}(A[T]) \to E^{n}(\prod A_{\mathfrak m}[T])\) (a local global principle for Euler class group). \end{itemize}