Nil-clean index of \(M_n(\mathbb{F}_2)\) (Q2244883)

A ring \(R\) is \textsl{nil-clean of index} \(k\) if there exists a positive integer \(k\) such that every element \(a\in R\) can be expressed as \(a=e+q\) where \(e^{2}=e\) and \(q^{k}=0\), and \(k\) is the smallest integer with this property. It is known that the matrix ring \(\mathbb{M}_{n}(\mathbb{F}_{2})\) is nil-clean of index 3 or 4 for every \(n\geq 3\), while the question for which \(n\) the nil-clean index is exactly 3 (resp. 4) was not been completely answered. In this paper, a complete answer to this question is given. Theorem 17. Let \(n\) be a positive integer. Then \(\mathbb{M}_{n}( \mathbb{F}_{2})\) is nil-clean of index 3 if and only if \(n\in \{3,5,6,7,10,11,15\}\). The final results on matrices of nil-clean index 4, follow from Theorem 10. Let \(p(x)=x^{4}+x^{3}+1\in F_{2}[x]\) and let \(k,m\) be positive integers such that \(4m>5k\). Then for every \(A_{0}\in \mathbb{M}_{k}( \mathbb{F}_{2})\), the matrix \(A=\underset{m}{\underbrace{C_{p}\oplus \cdots \oplus C_{p}}}\oplus A_{0}\in \mathbb{M}_{4m+k}(\mathbb{F}_{2})\) is not nil-clean of index less than 4 in \( \mathbb{M}_{4m+k}(\mathbb{F}_{2})\). Corollary 11. If either \(n=4m+1\) with \(m\geq 2\) or \(n=4m+2\) with \( m\geq 3\) or \(n=4m+3\) with \(m\geq 4\), then \(\mathbb{M}_{n}(\mathbb{F}_{2})\) is nil-clean of index 4. The proofs extensively use companion matrices associated with polynomials.