A generic representation theorem for non-commutative rings (Q1330032)

A standard construction in (commutative) ring theory is that of associating a topological space, usually called the ``spectrum'' of the ring in question, and then further constructing on this spectrum a sheaf of rings in such a manner that the original ring \(R\) is recovered as the global sections of the sheaf. This all falls under the theory of sheaves on a frame [see \textit{P. T. Johnstone}, ``Stone Spaces'', Cambridge University Press (1982; Zbl 0499.54001)]. In generalizing to the noncommutative case, the authors replace the notion of frame by the more general one of a unital quantale. A unital quantale is most succintly described as a monoid object in the category of sup-lattices (lattices with sup-preserving maps). [See the reviewer's book ``Quantales and their applications'', Pitman Research Notes in Math., Vol. 234 (1990; Zbl 0703.06007).] As the authors warn, their notion of unital quantale is not the most general one, as they further stipulate for the multiplicative unit 1 of the quantale also to be the top element in the lattice. Thus, their construction will not generalize to certain non-ring theoretic quantales of interest. The ``spectrum'' in this paper is given by the quantale \(\text{Idl} (R)\) of two-sided ideals of the ring \(R\) (unital). The description of a sheaf on a locale \(L\) as a set provided with an \(L\)-valued equality is generalized. Thus an \(\text{Idl} (R)\)-sheaf comes equipped with a set \(A\) together with an equality relation \(=:A\times A\to\text{Idl}(R)\), where the elements of \(A\) are viewed as generators of the sheaf and the relation \([a=b]\) defines the extent to which the generators \(a\) and \(b\) coincide. A sheaf \({\mathcal R}\) is constructed by taking the elements of \(R\) as generators and defining \([r=s]\) as the two-sided annihilator ideal \(\text{Ann}(r-s)\). The main result shows that the original ring \(R\) is recovered as the global sections of the sheaf \({\mathcal R}\). The paper concludes with some observations as to how one can obtain some classical sheaf representations from this one by utilizing appropriate quantic nuclei on the quantale \(\text{Idl} (R)\) to obtain the spectrum and adjusting the notion of equality in a suitable manner.