Asymptotic behavior of parameter ideals in generalized Cohen-Macaulay modules (Q947515)

The main result in this paper is to provide an affirmative answer to the question: \textit{Does a generalized Cohen-Macaulay ring have eventual constant index of reducibility of parameter ideals?} It is well-known that any submodule \(N\) of a finitely generated module \(M\) over a noetherian local ring \(R\) is an irredundant intersection of irreducible submodules, and the number of submodules in such an intersection depends only on \(N\). Thus for a parameter ideal \(\mathfrak q\) of \(R\), the number \(N_{R}(\mathfrak q;M)\) of irreducible submodules in such a decomposition is called the \textit{index of reducibility} of \(\mathfrak q\) on \(M\) and it equals the socle dimension of \(M/{\mathfrak q}M\). \textit{D. G. Northcott} [J. Lond. Math. Soc. 32, 82--88 (1957; Zbl 0081.03402)] proved that Cohen-Macaulay local rings have constant index of reducibility, that is, the index of reducibility does not depend on the parameter ideal. On the other side, this property does not characterize Cohen-Macaulay modules. The authors prove that generalized Cohen-Macaulay rings have eventual constant index of reducibility. In details, the main result is as follows. Let \(M\) be a generalized Cohen-Macaulay module over a noetherian local ring \((R,\mathfrak m)\) with \(\dim M=d\). Then there is a positive integer \(n\) such that for every parameter ideal \(\mathfrak q\) of \(M\) contained in \(\mathfrak{m}^n\) the index of reducibility \(N(\mathfrak q;M)\) is independent of the choice of \(\mathfrak q\) and it is given by \[ N(\mathfrak q;M)=\sum_{i=0}^d {d\choose i}s(H_{\mathfrak m}^i(M)). \] As a corollary they get the following interesting result: Let \(R\) be a generalized Cohen-Macaulay ring and assume that either \(\dim R\geq 2\) or \(\dim R=1\) and \(e(R)\geq 1\). There exists a positive \(n\) such that \(I^2={\mathfrak q}I\) for every parameter ideal \({\mathfrak q}\subseteq {\mathfrak m}^n\), where \(I={\mathfrak q}\;\colon {\mathfrak m}\).