Quasi-complete intersection homomorphisms

Extending a notion defined for surjective maps by Blanco, Majadas, and Rodicio, we introduce and study a class of homomorphisms of commutative noetherian rings, which strictly contains the class of locally complete intersection homomorphisms, while sharing many of its remarkable properties.Comment: Final version, to appear in the special issue of Pure and Applied Mathematics Quarterly dedicated to Andrey Todorov. The material in the first four sections has been reorganized and slightly expande

Ascent Properties of Auslander Categories

Let R be a homomorphic image of a Gorenstein local ring. Recent work has shown that there is a bridge between Auslander categories and modules of finite Gorenstein homological dimensions over R. We use Gorenstein dimensions to prove new results about Auslander categories and vice versa. For example, we establish base change relations between the Auslander categories of the source and target rings in a homomorphism R -> S of finite flat dimension.Comment: Minor corrections; example added; 30 pp. To appear in Canad. J. Math. Also available from authors' homepages http://www.math.unl.edu/~lchristensen3/publications.html and http://home.imf.au.dk/holm/publications.htm

Homology over local homomorphisms

The notions of Betti numbers and of Bass numbers of a finite module N over a local ring R are extended to modules that are only assumed to be finite over S, for some local homomorphism f: R --> S. Various techniques are developed to study the new invariants and to establish their basic properties. In several cases they are computed in closed form. Applications go in several directions. One is to identify new classes of finite R-modules whose classical Betti numbers or Bass numbers have extremal growth. Another is to transfer ring theoretical properties between R and S in situations where S may have infinite flat dimension over R. A third is to obtain criteria for a ring equipped with a `contracting' endomorphism -- such as the Frobenius endomorphism -- to be regular or complete intersection; these results represent broad generalizations of Kunz's characterization of regularity in prime characteristic.Comment: To appear in the American Journal of Mathematics; new version has minor changes in the presentation; table of content removed; 52 page