Covering numbers of commutative rings (Q2022441)

The goal of the article is to characterize when an associative and unital ring \(R\) can be expressed as the set theoretic union of a family of its proper subrings; if that happens, \(R\) is called coverable. The subrings of the cover do not necessarily contain the unity of \(R\), so that a larger class of subrings can be used in ring covers; for example a proper ideal can be taken into account in such a cover. The authors explores how to obtain a cover for a coverable ring. If \(R\) admits a finite cover, the covering number \(\sigma(R)\) is defined as the cardinality of a minimal cover. This problem has its origin in the analogue statement for groups, whose literature is rather large. The authors remark that given a two-sided ideal \(I\) of \(R\), a cover of \(R/I\) can be lifted to a cover of \(R\). Therefore, \(\sigma(R)\leq\sigma(R/I)\). When such inequality is strict for every such an ideal, they call \(R\) \(\sigma\)-elementary. This notion turns out to be useful for answering questions about covering numbers. In section 3, the authors show the following reduction argument: if a ring admits a finite cover, then there exists a finite residue ring \(\overline R\) of \(R\) of characteristic a prime \(p\) with the same covering number of \(R\) and such that the Jacobson radical of \(\overline{R}\) has nilpotency \(2\). In section 4, it is assumed that \(R\) is of this kind and furthermore that \(R\) is commutative. From the Wedderburn-Malcev Theorem, there exists a unique semisimple subring \(S\subseteq R\) such that \(S\cong R/J\) and \(R=S\oplus J\). The authors show that from this decomposition, it follows that a minimal cover of \(R\) can be obtained either by lifting a cover of \(R/J\cong S\) to \(R\) or by considering a cover of \(J\) formed by maximal subideals \(\{I_j\}_{j=1,\ldots,m}\) and then take the cover \(\{S\oplus I_j\}_{j=1,\ldots,m}\) of \(R\). The main Theorem 4.8 of this section shows that under the above assumptions, if \(J=(0)\) then \(R\) is isomorphic to a finite direct product of finite fields of a specific kind (determined by the second author in a previous publication, see [Am. Math. Mon. 122, No. 6, 552--566 (2015; Zbl 1339.16023)]) or if \(J\not=\{0\}\) to a matrix ring whose elements are \(3\times 3\) matrices of the form \(\begin{pmatrix}a&b&c\\ 0&a&0\\ 0&0&a\end{pmatrix}\) where \(a,b,c\) belongs to some finite field \(\mathbb F_q\) (if \(J\not=(0)\)). Finally, all the possible covering numbers for a commutative ring are classified in Corollary 4.9. In Section 5, the results of the previous sections are generalized to the case where only the residue ring \(R/J\) is assumed to be commutative. If \(J\not=(0)\), then \(\sigma(R)=p^d+1\), where \(p\) is the characteristic of \(R\) and \(d\) is a positive integer.