Perfect linkage of Cohen--Macaulay modules over Cohen--Macaulay rings

In this paper, we introduce and study the notion of linkage by perfect modules, which we call perfect linkage, for Cohen-Macaulay modules over Cohen--Macaulay local rings. We explore perfect linkage in connection with syzygies, maximal Cohen-Macaulay approximations and Yoshino-Isogawa linkage. We recover a theorem of Yoshino and Isogawa, and analyze the structure of double perfect linkage. Moreover, we establish a criterion for two Cohen-Macaulay modules of codimension one to be perfectly linked, and apply it to the classical linkage theory for ideals. We also construct various examples of linkage of modules and ideals.