On Normal Bases for Finite Commutative Rings

This paper is devoted to the introduction of extension rings S : = R[x]/gR[x] with a suitable polynomial g ? R[x] of arbitrary commutative rings R with identity and to the development of a normal basis concept of S over R, which is similar to that of Galois extensions of finite fields. We prove new results for Galois extensions of local rings and apply them together with the Chinese remainder theorem to solve the above task in a constructive way.