This paper presents the theory of Secondary Representation of modules over a commutative ring and their Attached Primes; introduced in 1973 by I. MacDonald as a dual to the important theory of associated primes and primary decomposition in commutative algebra. The paper explores many of the basic aspects of the theory of primary decomposition and associated primes of modules in the hopes to delineate and motivate the construction of a secondary representation, when possible. The thesis discusses the results of the uniqueness of representable modules and their attached primes, and, in particular, the existence of a secondary representation for Artinian modules. It concludes with some interesting examples of both secondary and representable modules, highlighting the consequences of the results thus established.

Let R be a non-zero commutative Noetherian ring with unit 1 ≠ 0, a be an ideal of R, and M and N be R-modules. This thesis makes a contribution to the study of generalized local cohomology modules, namely Hia (M;N), with applications for the study of attached primes, torsion product and extension functors, and integral closures and multiplicities relative to Artinian modules. In particular, we obtained results on the following topics: counting the number of non-isomorphic top generalized local cohomology modules, conditions to finiteness, cofiniteness, artinianess and representability of generalized local cohomology modules, torsion product and extension functors applied to R-modules, and conditions to equality between some types of integral closures and multiplicities. / Sejam R um anel Noetheriano comutativo com unidade 1 ≠ 0, a um ideal de R e M e N módulos sobre R. Nessa tese, fazemos contribuições ao estudo dos módulos de cohomologia local generalizada, a saber Hia (M;N), com aplicações ao estudo dos ideais primos anexados de R, funtores torção e extensão, e fecho integral e multiplicidades relativos a módulos artinianos. Em particular, estabelecemos resultados nos seguintes temas: contar o número de módulos de cohomologia local generalizados no topo não isomorfos; condições para os módulos de cohomologia local e os funtores torção e extensão aplicados a R-módulos terem características finitas (finitamente gerado, finitos primos associados, etc), serem cofinitos, serem artinianos e serem representáveis; e condições para a igualdade entre tipos de fechos integrais e multiplicidades.