Noncommutative generalizations of theorems of Cohen and Kaplansky. (Q1926574)

The unifying theme of the paper under review is to identify certain ``small'' sets of right ideals of a not necessarily commutative ring \(R\) on which properties such as being finitely generated or principal can be tested in order to ascertain that they hold for all right ideals of \(R\). The results of this investigation allow to obtain generalizations of the following well known theorems: A commutative ring \(R\) is (a) Noetherian if every prime ideal of \(R\) is finitely generated (Cohen's Theorem); (b) a principal ideal ring if every maximal ideal of \(R\) is principal (Kaplansky's Theorem); (c) a principal ideal ring if every prime ideal of \(R\) is principal (Kaplansky-Cohen Theorem). Throughout the paper, the following concepts play an important role: (1) a family \(\mathcal F\) of right ideals of \(R\) is called (right) Oka, if \(R\in\mathcal F\) and if for every \(a\in R\) and every right ideal \(I\) of \(R\) it follows from \(I+aR\in\mathcal F\) and \(a^{-1}I:=\{r\in R\mid ar\in I\}\in\mathcal F\) that \(I\in\mathcal F\); (2) a set \(\mathcal S\) of right ideals is a (Noetherian) point annihilator set for the class \(\mathcal C\) of (all Noetherian) right \(R\)-modules if every \(M\in\mathcal C\) contains a nonzero element whose annihilator belongs to \(\mathcal S\). Along with its consequences, the main result of the article, called the ``Point Annihilator Theorem'', provides sufficient conditions for a property of a set of right ideals to be testable on a subset. The theorem is rather technical and will not be stated here, but the following corollary gives an idea of the wide range of possible applications of this result: Let \(\mathcal F\) be a right Oka family that consists of finitely generated right ideals, and let \(\mathcal S\) be a Noetherian point annihilator set in a ring \(R\). Then the following statements are equivalent: (1) \(\mathcal F\) consists of all right ideals of \(R\); (2) \(\mathcal F\) is a Noetherian point annihilator set; (3) \(\mathcal S\subseteq\mathcal F\). By taking \(\mathcal F\) and \(\mathcal S\) to be the set of all finitely generated right ideals, and the set of all completely prime right ideals, respectively, one gets the generalized Cohen's Theorem: A ring \(R\) is right Noetherian if and only if the completely prime right ideals of \(R\) are finitely generated. Generalizations of the other two classical theorems mentioned above, and many others, are obtained in a similar fashion.