Geometry of superficial elements (Q817419)

The concept of superficial element has been introduced by P. Samuel in 1951 for the study of multiplicities of primary ideals in local noetherian rings. The aim of this paper is to investigate superficial elements of an ideal with respect to a module by using projective geometry and blowing-up schemes. The main result of the paper characterizes superficiality via two nontrivial regularity conditions, which are shown to be equivalent to their algebraic formulations dues to D. Kirby.