Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2009
The Cartan determinant conjecture for left artinian rings was verified for quasihereditary rings showing detC(R) = detC(R/I), where I is a protective ideal generated by a primitive idempotent. This article identifies classes of rings generalizing the quasihereditary ones, first by relaxing the “projective” condition on heredity ideals. These rings, called left k-hereditary are all of finite global dimension. Next a class of rings is defined which includes left serial rings of finite global dimension, quasihereditary and left 1-hereditary rings, but also rings of infinite global dimension. For such rings, the Cartan determinant conjecture is true, as is its converse. This is shown by matrix reduction. Examples compare and contrast these rings with other known families and a recipe is given for constructing them.