Statement
Suppose
is a commutative unital ring and
is a proper integrally closed subring of
. Then,
has infinite index in
: in other words, the quotient group
is infinite.
Proof
Given: A ring
, a proper integrally closed subring
of
.
To prove:
has infinite index in
.
Proof: Suppose
has finite index, say
, in
. Let
be an element in
. Consider the elements
. Since there are only
cosets of
in
, there must exist
such that
are in the same coset. Let
. Then,
, so
satisfies the monic polynomial in
:
.