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The first chip identifies the source of the statement or construction; the second identifies the source of its local proof or verification.
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- 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.
The nilradical of an Artinian ring is a nilpotent ideal
Statement
Let be a commutative Artinian ring. Then the nilradical is a nilpotent ideal.
This theorem uses dependent choice only through the minimum condition for Artinian modules.
Facts & Assumptions
Given: A commutative Artinian ring . The dependent-choice use named in the Statement is the minimum-condition step invoked below.
Every nonempty family of submodules of an Artinian module has a minimal member. Applied to the regular module of a commutative Artinian ring, every nonempty family of ideals has a minimal member. (DCC and minimal-condition characterizations of Artinian modules).
Proof
Put . The chain is a descending chain of ideals, so it stabilizes: for some . If already , then is nilpotent and there is nothing more to prove.
Assume instead that . Let This family is nonempty because . By [L1], choose a minimal member of , and then choose with . Since and , minimality gives . Also , and because for every , one has . So , whence minimality again gives . Therefore for some .
The element lies in , so The nilradical and reduced rings says that is nilpotent; say . Iterating the identity gives , contradicting . Thus the assumption in step 2.1 is false, and the alternative left open in step 1.1 must hold: .
Hence the nilradical of an Artinian ring is a nilpotent ideal.