Universally catenarian integral domains (Q909723)

The authors study (not necessarily Noetherian) integral domains R that have the property that the polynomial ring \(R[X_ 1,...,X_ n]\) is catenarian for each positive \(integer n\). Such domains are said to be universally catenarian. It is proved that a domain R with this property is a stably strong S-domain in the sense of \textit{S. Malik} and \textit{J. L. Mott} [J. Pure Appl. Algebra 28, 249-264 (1983; Zbl 0536.13001)]. As a generalization of the fact that a 1-dimensional Noetherian domain is universally catenarian, it is shown that if R has valuative dimension one, then R is universally catenarian. Another of several results proved in the paper is that if R is a locally finite-dimensional going-down domain, then R is universally catenarian if and only if the integral closure of R is a Prüfer domain.