Two-sided essential nilpotence (Q1187598)

An ideal \(I\) of a ring \(A\) is essentially nilpotent, if \(I\) contains a nilpotent ideal \(N\) of \(A\) such that \(J \cap N \neq 0\) whenever \(J\) is a nonzero ideal of \(A\) contained in \(I\). It is shown that every ring \(A\) has a unique largest essentially nilpotent ideal \(EN(A)\). A theorem on the largest essentially nilpotent ideal of a free normalizing extension is proved from which several corollaries are derived, e.g. \(EN(M_ n(A)) = M_ n(EN(A))\) for a matrix ring over \(A\), \(EN(A[x]) = EN(A)[x]\), for a polynomial ring \(A[x]\), and if the rings \(R\) and \(S\) with identity are Morita equivalent, then \(R\) is essentially nilpotent if and only if so is \(S\).