Lifting idempotents in associative pairs (Q1969370)

An associative pair \(A = (A^+, A^-)\) is said to be a left (resp. right) idempotent-lifting pair if for all \((x^+, x^-)\in A\) and every left (resp. right) ideal \(I = (I^+, I^-)\) such that \(x^{\sigma }-\langle x^{\sigma }x^{-\sigma }x^{\sigma }\rangle \in I^{\sigma }\) for all \(\sigma \in \{ +, -\},\) there exists an idempotent \((e^+, e^-)\) in \(A\) such that \(e^{\sigma }-x^{\sigma }\in I^{\sigma }\) for all \(\sigma \in \{ +, -\} .\) On the other hand for \(\sigma \in \{ +, -\}\) the \(k\)-module \(A^{\sigma }\) is said to be left (resp. right) regular-lifting when for every \(x^{\sigma }\in A^{\sigma }\) and all \(a^{-\sigma }\in A^{-\sigma }\) and left (resp. right) ideal \(I = (I^+, I^-)\) such that \(x^{\sigma }-\langle x^{\sigma }a^{-\sigma }x^{\sigma }\rangle \in I^{\sigma },\) there exists a von Neumann regular element \(u^{\sigma }\in A^{\sigma }\) such that \(x^{\sigma }-u^{\sigma }\in I^{\sigma }.\) The main result of this paper asserts the equivalence of the following assertions: (i) \(A\) is left (right) idempotent-lifting; (ii) \(A^+\) is left (right) regular-lifting; (iii) \(A^-\) is left (right) regular-lifting. As a nice consequence, the authors obtain that a unital ring \(R\) is idempotent-lifting if and only if it is a left (right) regular lifting-ring. Moreover they study the behaviour of a pair and its standard embedding with respect to the property of being idempotent-lifting. In this way they obtain that the idempotent-lifting character of the Loos standard embedding \({\mathcal U}_A\) implies that of \(A\) and if the standard embeddings of Loos and Lister agree then \(A\) is left (resp. right) idempotent-lifting if and only if \({\mathcal U}_A\) is so. It is also proved that the Jacobson radical of idempotent-lifting pairs is the largest ideal containing no nonzero idempotents. Finally the last section is devoted to the study of lifting orthogonal idempotents in this class of pairs.