On Modules Whose Proper Homomorphic Images Are of Smaller Cardinality

http://dx.doi.org/10.4153/CMB-2011-120-0
Canad. Math. Bull. 55(2012), 378-389

  Published:2011-06-15
 Printed: Jun 2012

Let $R$ be a commutative ring with identity, and let $M$ be a unitary module over $R$. We call $M$ H-smaller (HS for short) if and only if $M$ is infinite and $|M/N|<|M|$ for every nonzero submodule $N$ of $M$. After a brief introduction, we show that there exist nontrivial examples of HS modules of arbitrarily large cardinality over Noetherian and non-Noetherian domains. We then prove the following result: suppose $M$ is faithful over $R$, $R$ is a domain (we will show that we can restrict to this case without loss of generality), and $K$ is the quotient field of $R$. If $M$ is HS over $R$, then $R$ is HS as a module over itself, $R\subseteq M\subseteq K$, and there exists a generating set $S$ for $M$ over $R$ with $|S|<|R|$. We use this result to generalize a problem posed by Kaplansky and conclude the paper by answering an open question on Jónsson modules.