Tensor products and solutions to two homological conjectures for Ulrich modules

We address the problem of when the tensor product of two finitely generated modules over a Cohen-Macaulay local ring is Ulrich in the generalized sense of Goto et al., and in particular in the original sense from the 80’s. As applications, besides freeness criteria for modules, characterizations of complete intersections, and an Ulrich-based approach to the long-standing Berger’s conjecture, we give simple proofs that two celebrated homological conjectures, namely the Huneke-Wiegand and the Auslander-Reiten problems, are true for the class of Ulrich modules.