Principal ideal ring implies one-dimensional

From Commalg

This article gives the statement and possibly, proof, of an implication relation between two commutative unital ring properties. That is, it states that every commutative unital ring satisfying the first commutative unital ring property (i.e., principal ideal ring) must also satisfy the second commutative unital ring property (i.e., one-dimensional ring)
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Statement

Verbal statement

Any principal ideal ring is a one-dimensional ring: its Krull dimension is at most one. In other words, it cannot have an ascending chain of prime ideals of length more than one.

Statement with symbols

Suppose is a principal ideal ring. Then, we cannot have a strictly ascending chain of prime ideals in of the form:

Related facts

Proof

Given: A principal ideal ring .

To prove: There cannot be three prime ideals with the containment strict.

Proof: Suppose we have such prime ideals. Since is a principal ideal ring, we can choose generators of . We then have for some . Since is prime and , we have . Thus, for some . This yields:

which simplifies to:

.

Since and is prime, we have that either (not possible since the containment is strict) or (not possible since is a proper ideal). Thus, we have the required contradiction.