Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 August 2014
Let $\mathfrak{R}$ be a complete discrete valuation ring, $S=\mathfrak{R}[[u]]$ and $d$ a positive integer. The aim of this paper is to explain how to efficiently compute usual operations such as sum and intersection of sub-$S$-modules of $S^d$. As $S$ is not principal, it is not possible to have a uniform bound on the number of generators of the modules resulting from these operations. We explain how to mitigate this problem, following an idea of Iwasawa, by computing an approximation of the result of these operations up to a quasi-isomorphism. In the course of the analysis of the $p$-adic and $u$-adic precisions of the computations, we have to introduce more general coefficient rings that may be interesting for their own sake. Being able to perform linear algebra operations modulo quasi-isomorphism with $S$-modules has applications in Iwasawa theory and $p$-adic Hodge theory. It is used in particular in Caruso and Lubicz (Preprint, 2013, arXiv:1309.4194) to compute the semi-simplified modulo $p$ of a semi-stable representation.