Engel varieties of associative rings and the number of Mersenne primes (Q1868914)

An associative ring \(R\) is a semigroup with respect to the ``circle operation'' \(a\circ b=a+b+ab\); \(R\) is also a Lie ring under the Lie operation \([a,b]=ab-ba\) for all elements \(a\) and \(b\) in \(R\). It was shown by Ya. Sysak and the reviewer that the Lie ring \(R\) is nilpotent if and only if the adjoint semigroup is nilpotent. The author proves similar results for associative rings whose Lie rings satisfy an Engel identity. In particular it is shown that an algebra \(A\) over a field \(F\) is \(n\)-Engel for some \(n\geq 1\) if and only if the adjoint semigroup of \(A\) satisfies a so-called \(m\)-Thue-Morse identity for some \(m\) depending on \(n\) and \(F\) is not a field of Mersenne order.