The nil radical of power series rings (Q1293987)

Many studies in the theory of associative rings concern radicals and related properties of rings arising under various constructions. Many open problems in the area concern power series rings. In this paper, the authors continue studies of the nil radical of such rings. It is relatively easy to show that the power series ring in at least two non-commuting indeterminates is nil if and only if the coefficient ring is nilpotent. Thus it is natural to expect that an element of a power series ring in at least two non-commuting indeterminates belongs to the nil radical of the ring if and only if the ideal of the coefficient ring generated by the coefficients of the element is nilpotent. The authors prove that this is indeed the case. The structure of the nil radical of power series rings in one indeterminate is more complicated. In 1982, A. A. Klein proved that if \(R\) is a nil ring of bounded index, then so is the ring \(R[x]\) of polynomials in one indeterminate \(x\). This immediately implies that the power series ring \(R\{x\}\) is nil of bounded index. The first author of this paper has previously proved that if \(R\{x\}\) is a nil ring, then \(R\) is nil of bounded index. Since \(R\{x\}\) is nil if and only if \(R\) is nil of bounded index, one could expect that an element of the power series ring \(A\{x\}\) belongs to the nil radical of \(A\{x\}\) if and only if the ideal of \(A\) generated by the coefficients of the element is nil of bounded index. The authors of this paper give an example which shows that this is not true even for commutative rings. However, they prove that every principal right nil ideal of \(A\{x\}\) is nil of bounded index. This in particular shows that the nil radical of \(A\{x\}\) coincides with \(N(A\{x\})\), where for a ring \(R\), \(N(R)\) is defined as \(N(R)=\{r\in R\mid rR\) is nil of bounded index\}.