Some results in local rings on ramification in low codimension (Q805678)

The paper contains various results on the structure of a finite ring extension \(R\subseteq A\), where both rings are local normal domains, the induced residue field extension is trivial, the rank n of the R-module A is invertible in A and A contains the n-th roots of unity. The main theme is to study the ramification of A over R by sorting out the problems which occur in codimention one from those arising in higher codimension. The results are numerous, and tend to look technical, so somewhat arbitrarily we present two samples: If R is regular, in codimension 1 the ramified primes are principal and have constant ramification index on each fiber, then there is a complete intersection D, \(R\subseteq D\subseteq A\), such that D/R is an abelian extension, and A/D is unramified in codimension 1. If furthermore A is complete, factorial, with isolated singularity, and with residue field algebraically closed of characteristic zero, then D can be chosen factorial.