Krull dimension

In commutative algebra, the Krull dimension of a commutative ring R, named after Wolfgang Krull, is the supremum of the lengths of all chains of prime ideals. The Krull dimension need not be finite even for a Noetherian ring. More generally the Krull dimension can be defined for modules over possibly non-commutative rings as the deviation of the poset of submodules.

The Krull dimension was introduced to provide an algebraic definition of the dimension of an algebraic variety: the dimension of the affine variety defined by an ideal I in a polynomial ring R is the Krull dimension of R/I.

A field k has Krull dimension 0; more generally, k[x1, ..., xn] has Krull dimension n. A principal ideal domain that is not a field has Krull dimension 1. A local ring has Krull dimension 0 if and only if every element of its maximal ideal is nilpotent.

There are several other ways that have been used to define the dimension of a ring. Most of them coincide with the Krull dimension for Noetherian rings, but can differ for non-Noetherian rings.

Explanation

We say that a chain of prime ideals of the form

p

0

⊊

p

1

⊊

…

⊊

p

n

{\displaystyle {\mathfrak {p}}_{0}\subsetneq {\mathfrak {p}}_{1}\subsetneq \ldots \subsetneq {\mathfrak {p}}_{n}}

has length

n

{\displaystyle n}

. That is, the length is the number of strict inclusions, not the number of primes; these differ by

1

{\displaystyle 1}

.