Strongly etale extensions and weak henseliziations (Q4495370)

A commutative local ring \((R,I)\) is said to be weakly Henselian if any factorization of the image of a monic polynomial \(f(X)\) in \(R[X]\) in \(k[X] = R/I [X]\) can be lifted to a corresponding factorization in \(R[X]\). In this paper the weak Henselization of \((R,I)\) is realized as the direct limit of the connected strongly étale neighborhoods of \((R,I)\). This construction enables one to view weak Henselization as a universal object with reference to its defining properties. If \(R\) is noetherian then so is its weak Henselization and it is a faithfully flat \(R\)-module. If \(R\) is weakly Henselian then the natural map from the Brauer group of \(R\) to the Brauer group of \(k\) is an isomorphism.