How statement and proof provenance work
The first chip identifies the source of the statement or construction; the second identifies the source of its local proof or verification.
- Literature-sourced: the exact statement appears in a cited source; only wording and notation differ.
- AI-adapted: a semantically identical restatement of literature-sourced material, modulo indexing, notation, and boundary cases adopted by the library.
- AI-generated: a genuinely novel statement formulated by AI, with no source for the claim itself.
These labels describe origin, not correctness: citations and verification chips remain separate evidence.
For a commutative ring,
Statement
Let be a commutative ring, let , let be the free -module on an -element set with standard basis (The free module on a set and its standard basis), and let be an -module. Write for the direct sum of copies of (The direct sum of an indexed family of modules), which for a finite index set is the coordinatewise product. Then
is an isomorphism of -modules, the source carrying the module structure of Over a commutative ring the homomorphism group is an -module.
At both sides are the zero module.
Facts & Assumptions
Given: A commutative ring , a natural number , the free module with standard basis , and an -module .
Every set map extends uniquely to an -module homomorphism with , given by (Universal property of the free module on a set).
In the standard basis vector has coordinate at and zero elsewhere, and every element has a unique expression with finite; for the module is (The free module on a set and its standard basis).
For a family of left -modules the direct sum is the submodule of the coordinatewise product consisting of the families of finite support; for both product and direct sum are the zero module (The direct sum of an indexed family of modules).
For a commutative ring and -modules , the abelian group is an -module under , with the published addition unchanged (Over a commutative ring the homomorphism group is an -module).
Proof
is a bijection. It is injective: two homomorphisms agreeing on are the unique extension of the same set map on the index set, hence equal. It is surjective: given , the set map extends to a homomorphism with , so .
is -linear. Addition in and in is pointwise and coordinatewise respectively, so ; and the scalar action on the source is pointwise, so .
A bijective -module homomorphism is an isomorphism of -modules, so is one. At the index set is empty: , the only homomorphism is the zero map, and is the zero module, so both sides are zero and is the unique map between them.
Remarks
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The isomorphism depends on the chosen basis. A different ordered basis of gives a different ; what is canonical is that is isomorphic to , not any particular isomorphism.
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Finiteness of the index set is what makes the target a direct sum. For an infinite index set the same argument identifies with the coordinatewise product of copies of , not with the direct sum, because a homomorphism may be nonzero on infinitely many basis vectors.