Artinian ring
A ring in which descending chains of ideals stabilize.
Let be a commutative ring.
is Artinian if it satisfies the descending chain condition (DCC) on ideals: for every chain
there exists such that for all .
Equivalent characterizations
Equivalently, every nonempty set of ideals of has a minimal element under inclusion.
Key consequences in the commutative case
- Every commutative Artinian ring is Noetherian. In particular, many finiteness tools become available automatically.
- A commutative Artinian ring has Krull dimension : every prime ideal is maximal. In terms of spectra, is a finite discrete space and coincides with the maximal spectrum.
- The Jacobson radical (the intersection of maximal ideals) is nilpotent, and decomposes as a finite product of Artinian local rings; this is closely related to the Chinese remainder theorem.
Examples
- Fields. Any field is Artinian: its only ideals are and .
- Finite quotients of . is Artinian (it is finite, so it has only finitely many ideals). For instance, is Artinian.
- Truncated polynomial rings. If is a field, then is Artinian: the ideals are , so every descending chain stabilizes.
(As a contrast, is Noetherian but not Artinian: the descending chain never stabilizes.)