Exercise 3.22

Formulate and prove the Chinese Remainder Theorem in a principal ideal domain.

Answers

Proposition. Let R a principal ideal domain, and m 1 , … , m t ∈ R . Suppose that ( m i , m j ) = 1 for i ≠ j (that is ( m i ) + ( m j ) = ( 1 ) , m i R + n i R = R ). Let b 1 , … , b t ∈ R and consider the system of congruences:

x ≡ b 1 ( mod m 1 ) , x ≡ b 2 ( mod m 2 ) , … , x ≡ b t ( mod m t ) .

This system has solutions and any two solutions differ by a multiple of m 1 m 2 ⋯ m t .

Proof. Let m = m 1 m 2 ⋯ m t , and n i = m ∕ m i , i = 1 , 2 , … , t .

As ( m 1 , m i ) = ( 1 ) , we can find u i , v i ∈ R such that m 1 u i + m i v i = 1 for i = 2 , … , t .

Therefore 1 = ∏ ⁡ i = 2 t ( m 1 u i + m i v i ) = m 1 u + ( m 2 ⋯ m t ) v for some elements u , v ∈ R , thus ( m 1 , n 1 ) = ( m 1 , m 2 m 3 ⋯ m t ) = ( 1 ) , and similarly ( m i , n i ) = 1 for all i = 1 , … , t . So there are r i , s i ∈ R such that r i m i + s i n i = 1 . Let e i = s i n i . Then e i ≡ 1 ( mod m i ) and e i ≡ 0 ( mod m j ) for j ≠ i .

Set x 0 = ∑ ⁡ i = 1 t b i e i . Then we have x 0 ≡ b i e i ≡ b i ( mod m i ) and so x 0 is a solution.

Suppose that x 1 is another solution. Then x 1 − x 0 ≡ 0 ( mod m i ) for i = 1 , 2 , … , t , in other words m 1 , m 2 , … , m t divide x 1 − x 0 , with ( m i , m j ) = 1 . By the generalization of Lemma 2 to principal rings, m divides x 1 − x 0 . □

This result can be generalized to any commutative ring, not necessarily a PID (see S.LANG, Algebra):

Proposition. Let A a commutative ring. Let a 1 , … , a n be ideals of A such that a i + a j = A for all i ≠ j . Given elements x 1 , … , x n ∈ A , there exists x ∈ A such that x ≡ x i ( mod a i ) for all i .

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2022-07-19 00:00
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