The space of finitely generated rings

The space of marked commutative rings on n given generators is a compact metrizable space. We compute the Cantor-Bendixson rank of any member of this space. For instance, the Cantor-Bendixson rank of the free commutative ring on n generators is omega^n, where omega is the smallest infinite ordinal. More generally, we work in the space of finitely generated modules over a given commutative ring.Comment: 10 pages, no figure. To appear in Internat. J. Algebra Compu

Counting submodules of a module over a noetherian commutative ring

We count the number of submodules of an arbitrary module over a countable noetherian commutative ring. We give, along the way, a structural description of meager modules, which are defined as those that do not have the square of a simple module as subquotient. We deduce in particular a characterization of uniserial modules over commutative noetherian rings.Comment: 34 pages. v2: expanded introduction and preliminarie