Question

Let $R$ be a commutative ring with unit and let $q$ be an ideal of $R$. There is thus a natural map $SL(n,R) \rightarrow SL(n,R/q)$ for all $n$. This map is surjective if $SL(n,R/q)$ is generated by elementary matrices, but I very much doubt that it is surjective in general (though I don't know any examples).

My questions are as follows.

1. Can someone give me an example of a ring $R$ and an ideal $q$ of $R$ such that the map $SL(n,R) \rightarrow SL(n,R/q)$ is not surjective for any $n$? I'd like the examples to be as nice as possible. For instance, it would be great to have an example where $R$ is Noetherian and has finite Krull dimension.

2. What conditions can I put on $R$ and $q$ to assure that this map is surjective, at least for large $n$?

Answer 1

A sort of universal example: Let $R$ be the polynomial ring $\mathbb Z[x_{11},x_{12},x_{21},x_{22}]$ and let $q$ be the ideal generated by $x_{11}x_{22}-x_{12}x_{21}-1$. The obvious element of $SL_2(R/q)$ does not come from $SL_2(R)$. You can see this by comparing with the example of the ring $\mathbb R[u,v]$ and the ideal generated by $u^2+v^2-1$, using the ring map taking $(x_{11},x_{12},x_{21},x_{22})$ to $(u,v,-v,u)$. If the resulting matrix came from an element of $SL_2(\mathbb R[u,v]$), then topologically the corresponding map from the circle in $\mathbb R^2$ defined by $u^2+v^2=1$ to $SL_2(\mathbb R)$ would extend to a continuous map $\mathbb R^2\mapsto SL_2(\mathbb R)$, which it doesn't. This example persists to $SL_n$ for $n>2$.