Some homological properties of commutative semitrivial ring extensions

LetR be a commutative ring with 1 andM anR-module. If:M _R MR is anR-module homomorphism satisfying(mm)=(mm) and(mm)m=m(mm), the additive abelian groupRM becomes a commutative ring, if multiplication is defined by (r,m)(r,m)=(rr+(mm),rm+rm). This ring is called the semitrivial extension ofR byM and and it is denoted byR M. This generalizes the notion of a trivial extension and leads to a more interesting variety of examples. The purpose of this paper is to studyR M; in particular, we are interested in some homological properties ofR M as that of being Cohen-Macaulay, Gorenstein or regular. A sample result: Let (R,m) be a local Noetherian ring,M a finitely generatedR-module and Im() m. ThenR M is Gorenstein if and only if eitherRM is Gorenstein orR is Gorenstein,M is a maximal Cohen-Macaulay module andMM ^*, where the isomorphism is given by the adjoint of.