A note on rings of finite rank

Abstract

The rank of a ring $R$ is the supremum of minimal cardinalities of generating sets of $I$ as $I$ ranges over ideals of $R$. Matson showed that every positive integer occurs as the rank of some ring $R$. Motivated by the result of Cohen and Gilmer that a ring of finite rank has Krull dimension $0$ or $1$, we give four different constructions of rings of rank $n$ (for all positive integers n). Two constructions use one-dimensional domains, and the former of these directly generalizes Matson's construction. Our third construction uses Artinian rings (dimension zero), and our last construction uses polynomial rings over local Artinian rings (dimension one, irreducible, not a domain).