Ascending chain condition

In mathematics, the ascending chain condition (ACC) and descending chain condition (DCC) are finiteness properties satisfied by some algebraic structures, most importantly ideals in certain commutative rings. These conditions played an important role in the development of the structure theory of commutative rings in the works of David Hilbert, Emmy Noether, and Emil Artin. The conditions themselves can be stated in an abstract form, so that they make sense for any partially ordered set. This point of view is useful in abstract algebraic dimension theory due to Gabriel and Rentschler.

A partially ordered set (poset) P is said to satisfy the ascending chain condition (ACC) if every strictly ascending sequence of elements eventually terminates. Equivalently, given any sequence

there exists a positive integer n such that

Similarly, P is said to satisfy the descending chain condition (DCC) if every strictly descending sequence of elements eventually terminates, that is, there is no infinite descending chain. Equivalently every descending sequence

of elements of P, eventually stabilizes.

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