Jacobson radical non-nil algebras of Gel'fand-Kirillov dimension 2. (Q1955778)

About a decade ago, \textit{J.~P.~Bell} [J. Algebra 263, No. 1, 159-175 (2003; Zbl 1028.16012)], stated that he expected the Jacobson radical \(J(R)\) of a prime affine algebra \(R\) with Gel'fand-Kirillov dimension 2 to be a nil ideal. The authors of the article under review refute this conjecture by constructing, for every countable field \(K\), an affine prime \(K\)-algebra \(R\) with the following properties: \(R\) is graded by the natural numbers and generated by finitely many elements of degree 1, \(\text{GK}\dim(R)=2\), \(J(R)=R\), but \(R\) is not nil and does not satisfy a polynomial identity. This is achieved by modifying a technique developed by the first author in such a way that it yields non-nil algebras.