On products of three triangular matrices over associative rings (Q1434400)

A ring \(R\) is said to have the Bass stable rank \(1\) in case \(aR+bR=R\) implies that \(a+by \in U(R)\) for a \(y \in R\). Clearly, \(R\) has Bass stable rank \(1\) if and only if \(a+bx =1\) with \(a, x, b \in R\) implies that \(a+by \in U(R)\) for a \(y \in R\) [cf. \textit{H. Chen}, Commun. Algebra 26, 3653--3668 (1998; Zbl 0914.16002)]. One of the most important features of the Bass stable rank \(1\) condition is the cancellation of related modules from direct sums. It is known that every strongly \(\pi\)-regular ring has Bass stable rank \(1\) and also every exchange ring with artinian primitive factors has Bass stable rank \(1\). \textit{K. R. Nagarajan, M. P. Devasahayam} and \textit{T. Soundararajan} [Linear Algebra Appl. 292, 61--71 (1999; Zbl 0933.15021)] showed that any square matrix over a field is the product of at most three triangular matrices and then they proved that a commutative ring \(R\) is a Hermite ring having Bass stable rank \(1\) if and only if every square matrix \(A\) can be written as \(A=LUM\), where \(L\) and \(M\) are lower triangular matrices, \(U\) is an upper triangular matrix and in \(U\) and \(M\) all the diagonal entries are equal to \(1\). In the paper under review the authors show that this result can be extended to any associative ring by a new route.