Abstract. Bass characterized the rings R with the property that every left .R-module has a projective cover. These are the left perfect rings. A ring is left perfect if and only if the class of projective Ä-modules coincides with the class of flat Ä-modules, so the projective covers over these rings are flat covers. This prompts the conjecture that over any ring R, every left Ä-module has a flat cover. Known classes of rings for which the conjecture holds include Von Neumann regular rings (trivially), the left perfect rings (Bass), Prüfer domains (Enochs), and then more generally, all right coherent rings of finite weak global dimension (Belshoff, Enochs, Xu).In this paper we show that the conjecture holds for all commutative Noetherian rings of finite Krull dimension and so for all local rings and all coordinate rings of affine algebraic varieties.
PreliminariesWe will use the terminology of Enochs [4]. We recall that if y is a class of left flat 7?-modules, a linear map tp: F -> M with F e y is called an yprecover of M if Hom^C?, F) -> HomÄ(G, M) -* 0 is exact for all G e y. If furthermore any linear map f:F-*F such that ftp = tp is an automorphism of F, then tp: F -> M is called an y-cover. If an y-cover exists, it is unique up to isomorphism. If, for example, y is the class of flat modules, then an y-precover (or cover) is called a flat precover (or cover). Note that since projective modules are flat, flat precovers are necessarily surjective. y-pre-envelopes and envelopes are defined dually.We note that in Auslander and Reiten's terminology [1], an y-precover and an y-cover are called a right y-approximation and a minimal right yapproximation respectively. In their language, our main result says that the class of flat modules is contravariantly finite in the category of left R-modules with R commutative, Noetherian, and of finite Krull dimension.