Ring decompositions induced by certain Lie ideals. (Q1880966)

The author obtains structure results for semiprime rings \(R\) with involution *, in the presence of certain Lie ideals or Jordan subrings. Assume the \(R\) contains a *-invariant, *-simple Lie ideal and subring \(U\) that also contains, for all \(r \in R\), either \(r^n\) for \(n\) a fixed integer or both \(rr^*\) and \(r+r^*\). Then the structure of \(R\) depends on whether its center \(Z(R)\) is nontrivial and on whether \(U\) is commutative. For example, if \(Z(R)\neq 0\) and \(U\) is not commutative then \(R=U\) is *-simple. Similarly, when the additive subgroup \(N\) generated by all \(rr^*\) is a simple Jordan ring and when \(R^2=R\) with \(4R\neq 0\), or when \(R\) is von Neumann regular, then as above in the case when the subring \(W\) generated by \(N\) is not commutative and \(Z(R)\neq 0\), \(R=W\) is *-simple.