New characterizations of pseudo-Frobenius rings and a generalization of the FGF conjecture (Q312251)

A ring~\(R\) is called right \textit{pseudo-Frobenius} (PF) if the module~\(R_R\) is an injective cogenerator. An Artinian right PF ring is known as a quasi-Frobenius (QF) ring. From a classical theorem of Osofsky it follows that every right PF ring has finitely generated essential right socle. In a similar spirit, the following characterization of PF rings is proven (Thm.~2.6). Denote by \(E(R_R)\) the injective envelope of~\(R_R\) and by \(Z(R_R)\) the singular right ideal of~\(R\) consisting of all elements with essential right annihilator. The ring~\(R\) is called right \textit{(R)-tight} if every finitely generated (cyclic) submodule of \(E(R_R)\) embeds in~\(R\). And a ring is said to have \textit{completely nil} Jacobson radical if any element in the radical of a quotient ring is nilpotent. For a ring~\(R\) the following conditions are equivalent: (1) \(R\)~is right PF, (2) \(R_R\)~is a cogenerator and every cyclic submodule of \(E(R_R)\) essentially embeds in a projective module, (3) \(R\)~is a right (R-)tight cogenerator and \(R / Z(R_R)\) has completely nil Jacobson radical, (4) \(R\)~is right tight, semilocal and the injective envelopes of simple right \(R\)-modules are finitely generated. Moreover, it is shown (Cor.~2.9) that a ring is right PF if and only if~\(R_R\) is \(R\)-tight, cogenerating and \textit{extending}, i.e., every right ideal essentially embeds in a direct summand of~\(R\). A key ingredient for obtaining these equivalences are results establishing that under certain technical conditions the ring has finitely generated essential right socle (Thms.~2.1, 2.5). Several other corollaries and examples are presented. It is known that a ring is QF provided that every right module embeds in a free module. The FGF conjecture of Faith asserts that the QF property is already implied if all finitely generated right modules embed in a free module. This follows from the CF conjecture stating that a ring is right Artinian if every cyclic right module embeds in a free module. In this context, the following conjecture is proposed (Conj.~3.1), which implies the CF and hence the FGF conjecture: Suppose that~\(R_R\) is Kasch and every finitely generated (cyclic) submodule of \(E(R_R)\) embeds in a free module, does~\(R\) have a finitely generated essential right socle? The conjecture is proven (Thm.~3.4) in the cyclic version under the additional requirement that the Jacobson radical of \(R / Z(R_R)\) is completely right \(T\)-nilpotent. The results and techniques presented in this paper are of great interest for the specialist in the field. The proofs of the aforementioned results are elaborate, but technically demanding.