On some permanence properties of (derived) splinters

Abstract

We show that Noetherian splinters ascend under essentially étale homomorphisms. Along the way, we also prove that the henselization of a Noetherian local splinter is always a splinter and that the completion of a local splinter with geometrically regular formal fibers is a splinter. Finally, we give an example of a (non-excellent) Gorenstein local splinter with mild singularities whose completion is not a splinter. Our results provide evidence for a strengthening of the direct summand theorem, namely that regular maps preserve the splinter property.

Comments welcome; minor edits reflecting referee suggestions; corrected a citation; to appear in Michigan Math. J