Unitary strongly prime rings and related radicals. (Q1812021)

The self-injective hull \(RC\) of a semiprime ring \(R\) considered as an \((R,R)\)-bimodule, furnished with a canonical ring structure, is called the central closure of \(R\). Equivalently, the central closure \(RC\) of a semiprime ring \(R\) may be considered as the subring of the Martindale right (left) ring of quotients \(Q=Q_r(R)\) (or \(Q_l(R)\)) of \(R\) generated by \(R\) and the center \(C(R)\) of \(Q\), which is called extended centroid of \(R\). Prime rings with simple central closures are called symmetric strongly prime rings. A prime ring \(R\) is called unitary strongly prime, if \(RC\) is a simple ring with identity element. A class \(\mathcal A\) of prime rings is called a special class if for any non-zero ideal \(I\) of a ring \(R\) we have, \(I\) belongs to \(\mathcal A\) if and only if \(R\) is in \(\mathcal A\). The authors show that the class \(\mathcal S\) of all unitary strongly prime rings is the largest special class of rings \(\mathcal A\) which is contained in the class \({\mathcal S}'\) of all symmetric strongly prime rings and satisfies the property: if \(R\in{\mathcal A}\), then \(RC\in{\mathcal A}\). They also prove many interesting properties of unitary strongly prime rings, mainly concerning centred extensions of rings. The authors define the unitary strongly prime radical as the upper radical \(\mathcal S\) determined by the class of all unitary strongly prime rings and investigate properties of the radical. In particular, using results obtained on unitary strongly prime rings, the authors show that for any ring \(R\) the unitary strongly prime radical \({\mathcal S}(R[X])\) of a polynomial ring \(R[X]\) over \(R\) in any set \(X\) of either commuting or non-commuting indeterminates is equal to \({\mathcal S}(R)[X]\), where \({\mathcal S}(R)\) denotes the unitary strongly prime radical of \(R\). A non-zero ideal \(M\) of a polynomial ring \(R[x_1,x_2,\dots,x_n]\) over a ring \(R\) in \(n\) indeterminates \(x_1,x_2,\dots,x_n\) is called \(R\)-disjoint if \(M\cap R=0\). The authors apply their results on unitary strongly prime rings to study \(R\)-disjoint maximal ideals of \(R[x_1,x_2,\dots,x_n]\). In particular, they show that there exists an integer \(n\geqslant 1\) and an \(R\)-disjoint ideal \(M\) of \(R[x_1,x_2,\dots,x_n]\) such that \(R[x_1,x_2,\dots,x_n]/M\) is a simple ring with identity if and only if \(R\) is a unitary strongly prime ring with a non-zero pseudo-radical \(ps(R)\), where \(ps(R)\) denotes the intersection of all non-zero prime ideals of \(R\). This allows them to prove that for any ring \(R\) and any infinite set \(X\) of either commuting or non-commuting indeterminates we have \({\mathcal S}(R[X])={\mathcal U}(R[X])\), where \({\mathcal U}(R[X])\) denotes the Brown-McCoy radical of \(R[X]\), that is, the intersection of all ideals \(M\) of \(R[X]\) such that \(R[X]/M\) is a simple ring with identity. The authors conclude that for a PI ring \(R\) this holds for any set \(X\). Also, the authors raise several open questions related to their investigations which open the door for further research.