§ Nakayama's lemma
I read the statement as IM=M⟹M=0, when I is in the jacobson radical.
- Essentially, it tells us that if a module M "lives by the I", then it also "dies by the I".
- Alternatively, we factor the equation as M(I−1)=0. Since our ideal Iis a member of the jacobson radical, (1−I) is "morally" a unit and thus M=0. This is of course completely bogus, but cute nontheless.
- We can think of a graded ring, say R[x] acting on some graded module M (say, a subideal, M=(x2)). When we compute IM, this will bump up the grading of M. If IM=M, then M could not have had non-trivial elements in the first place, since the vector of, say, "non-zero elements in each grade" which used to look like (v0,v1,v2,…) will now look like (0,v0,v1,…). Equating the two, we get v0=0,v1=v0=0,v2=v1=0 and so on, collapsing the entire ring.