Units in quotient ring of $\mathbb Z[X]$
An exercise from Dummit & Foote:
Determine the units of the ring $A = \mathbb{Z}[X]/(X^{3})$ and the structure of the unit group $A^{\times}$.
Help would be great.
Thanks!
Actually nobody answered the second part of the problem about the structure of the unit group $A^{\times}.$ The answer is the following:
$A^{\times}$ is isomorphic to the abelian group $\mathbb{Z}_2\times\mathbb{Z}^2$.
Hint. The unit group can be written as a direct sum of the subgroups generated by $-1$, $1+x$, and $1+x^2$ respectively. The subgroup generated by $-1$ is the torsion subgroup of $A^{\times}$, whilst the subgroup generated by $1+x$ and $1+x^2$ is the free part of $A^{\times}$.
Of course, the problem (and its answer) can be easily generalized to the ring $\mathbb{Z}[X]/(X^n)$.
The key trick is that there is a canonical ring-morphism $A=\mathbb Z[X]/(X^3)=\mathbb Z[x]\to \mathbb Z[X]/(X) \simeq\mathbb Z$ (why?) and that units are sent to units by ring morphisms.
So any unit of $A$ is of the form $u=a+bx+cx^2$ with $a$ a unit in $\mathbb Z$ .
I won't tell you that $x$ is nilpotent: my colleagues on this site would say that I'm making things too easy for you.