Mathematics Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people studying math at any level and professionals in related fields. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Nakayama's lemma states that given a finitely generated $A$-module $M$, and $J(A)$ the Jacobson radical of $A$, with $I\subseteq J(A)$ some ideal, then if $IM=M$, we have $M=0$.
I've read the proof, and while being relatively simple, it doesn't give much insight on why this lemma should be true, for example - is there some way to see how the fact that $J(A)$ is the intersection of all maximal ideals related to the result?
Any intuition on the conditions and the result would be of great help.
Suppose your module is of finite length. Then you can consider on it the so called radical filtration, which organises the module into an onion-like thing, with elements of the maximal ideal pushing elements of the module farther in from their starting layer to one right below and, moreover, each layer obtained from the one above it in this way.
Now, the condition $\mathfrak m M=M$ tells you that the outermost layer of the module is actually empty: obviously, then, there is not much in the whole thing and $M=0$. We have just discovered Nakayama's lemma!
If your module is arbitrary, exactly the same happens.
Here's something that might or might not make sense to you. You know that every ideal $I$ of a commutative ring $R$ gives rise to an $R$-module $R/I$; these are precisely the $R$-modules on one generator. The $R$-modules of the form $R/m$ where $m$ is maximal are special among these. In this language, the elements of the Jacobson radical are precisely the ones that act trivially on all $R$-modules of the form $R/m$. It follows, for example, that if $I$ is in the Jacobson radical, then we cannot have $IM = M$ for any module of the form $R/m^k$.
Nakayama's lemma asserts that a similar statement is true for all finitely generated $R$-modules. This should be reasonable if you are aware of, for example, the classification of finitely generated $R$-modules when $R$ is a PID. The Wikipedia describes a geometric interpretation of this, but I'm not familiar enough with it to say more.
This is probably not the answer you're looking for, but here's another proof:
Suppose $M \neq 0$ and let $u_1,\ldots,u_n$ be a minimal set of generators for $M$. Then $u_n \in IM$ so we may write $u_n=a_1u_1+\ldots+a_nu_n$ with $a_i \in I$. Hence $(1-a_n)u_n=a_1u_1+\ldots+a_{n-1}u_{n-1}$. Since $I$ was contained in the Jacobson radical, it follows that $1-a_n$ is a unit. Hence $u_n$ belongs to the submodule generated by the $u_1,\ldots,u_{n-1}$, contradiction.
There is a more primitive and natural version of Nakayama's lemma:
Let $R$ be a commutative ring, and $M$ be a finitely generated $R$-module and $I\subset R$ be an ideal. If $IM=M$ then $\exists f\in I,\forall m\in M,f\cdot m=m$.
The proof is a bit harder than the above version, but this pretty much says "If $IM=M$ then one of the elements of $I$ stablizes all elements of $M$." And I think this is much more natural than the above version. Assuming this version, then we can see that the condition of "Jacobson ideal" is only used to show that "$1-f$ is a unit" which leads to "$M=0$".
For completion, I give a proof of the above version here:
Proof: Let $m_1,...,m_n$ be a set of generators of $M$. Since $IM=M$, we have a matrix $A'=(a_{ij})\in \textrm{M}_{n\times n}(R)$ such that $A'\underline{m}=\underline{m}$ where $\underline{m}=(m_1,...,m_n)^t$ and $a_{ij}\in I,\forall i,j\leq n$. Now let $A=\textrm{Id}-A'$ so we have $A\underline{m}=\underline{0}$.
Note that $\det A\in R$ is well-defined and there exists a matrix $B\in \textrm{M}_{n\times n}(R)$ s.t. $BA=AB=\det A\cdot \textrm{Id}$, the proof is in Corollary 9.161 of Advanced Modern Algebra by Joseph J. Rotman. Also $\det$ commutes with the quotient map $R\rightarrow R/I$, with $A\equiv \textrm{Id} \ (\textrm{mod }I)$ we can deduce that $\det A\in 1+I$, so $\exists f\in I$, s.t. $\det A=1-f$.
To show $f$ stablizes $M$ it suffices to show that $f\cdot m_i=m_i,\forall i$. $$\underline{0}=BA\underline{m}=\det A\cdot \underline{m}=(1-f)\cdot \underline{m}$$ So $$f\cdot \underline{m}=\underline{m}$$ The result follows. Q.E.D
