No label defined (Q4938825)

A regular morphism of Noetherian rings is a filtered colimit of smooth morphisms. This result was proved by the reviewer [\textit{D. Popescu}, Nagoya Math. J. 100, 97-126 (1985; Zbl 0561.14008); 104, 85-115 (1986; Zbl 0592.14014) and 118, 45-53 (1990; Zbl 0685.14009)], by \textit{M. André} [``Cinq exposés sur la desingularization'', Handwritten manuscript, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (1971)], by \textit{T. Ogoma} [J. Algebra 167, No.~1, 57-84 (1994; Zbl 0821.13003)] and by \textit{M. Spivakovsky} [J. Am. Math. Soc. 12, No.~2, 381-444 (1999; Zbl 0919.13009)]. The exposition under review contains the easiest, self contained presentation of the proof which could be used also by beginners: Low dimensional Quillen cohomology groups are introduced directly using an argument of Faltings, local criterion of flatness is given only in a simple form used in the proof, Zariski's main theorem is written after Peskine, etc. A strong motivation of the result is given by its applications to Artin approximation and the Bass-Quillen conjecture. The reviewer used this paper a lot in his exposition ``Artin approximation'' [in ``Handbook of Algebra'', ed. \textit{M. Hazewinkel} (Amsterdam 2000; Zbl 0949.00006), section 3A, 321-356 (2000)]. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0920.00026].