Tight closure and elements of small order in integral extensions (Q810590)

The theory of tight closure [see the authors in J. Am. Math. Soc. 3, No.1, 31-116 (1990; Zbl 0701.13002), and the references quoted there] has yielded new proofs and, sometimes unexpected strong, improvements of the homological conjectures and related questions. This method has so far been limited to the equicharacteristic case. One of the main objectives of the theory is to find an analogue of the characterization of the tight closure that makes sense in mixed characteristics. The present paper is a contribution in order to explore one such alternative definition of tight closure. It is shown that for an ideal I of a complete local domain (R,m) of prime characteristic x belongs to the tight closure of I if and only if there is a sequence \(\epsilon_ n\in (R^+)\setminus 0\) such that \(ord(\epsilon_ n)\to 0\) as \(n\to \infty\) and \(\epsilon_ nx\in IR^+\) for all n. Here \(R^+\) denotes the integral closure of R in the algebraic closure of its fraction field and ord denotes the extension of a valuation on R, positive on m. Note that \(R^+\) is a balanced big Cohen-Macaulay algebra for R as shown by the authors [see ``Infinite integral extensions and big Cohen-Macaulay algebras'', Ann. Math., II.Ser. (to appear)]. These results are used to prove that an element u of ``small'' order in a module finite extension S of R has the property that Ru\(\to S\) splits over R, which may be thought as a generalization of the direct summand theorem.