Characteristic modules over a local ring

Let R be a commutative noetherian local ring, and let M be a finitely generated R-module. Inspired by works of Vasconcelos and Briggs on characterization of complete intersection local rings through the homological properties of the conormal module, in this paper, we define the characteristic module TM and the cocharacteristic module EM of M, and investigate their properties. Our main results include characterizations of Cohen--Macaulay and Gorenstein local rings.