On ideals of regular rings (Q1862891)

Various results about (von Neumann) regular rings and their projective modules are carried over to ideals in regular rings. These include relations among the concepts of one-sided unit-regularity, stable rank \(1\), separativity, cancellation and substitution properties. In particular, the authors define a condition they call `the comparability' for an ideal \(I\) in a regular ring \(R\) (it is actually a relative one-sided unit-regularity condition), and prove that it is equivalent to (a) certain relative stable rank \(1\) conditions; (b) one-sided unit-regularity for all corners \(eRe\subseteq I\); (c) substitution conditions for \(R\)-module decompositions \(M=R_1\oplus B_1=R_2\oplus B_2\) such that \(R_1\cong R_2\cong R\) and the composition \(R @>\cong>>R_1@>\text{inj}>>M@>\text{proj}>>R_2@>\cong>>R\) is given by an element of \(1+I\). They also show that a minimal ideal \(I\) satisfies `the comparability' if and only if it is separative. Finally, they extend \textit{R. E. Hartwig}'s version of Roth's equivalence theorem [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 59, 39-44 (1976; Zbl 0347.15005)] from unit-regular rings to unit-regular ideals of regular rings. The reader should be warned that the authors' notion of `the comparability' has little to do with any comparability condition on modules. In particular, when \(I=R\), `the comparability' for \(R\) is just the condition of one-sided unit-regularity. While any regular ring satisfying the (standard) comparability axiom (i.e., for any finitely generated projective modules \(A\) and \(B\), either \(A\) embeds in \(B\) or vice versa) must be one-sided unit-regular, most one-sided unit-regular rings -- and even most unit-regular rings -- fail to satisfy the comparability axiom.