A Jordan canonical form for nilpotent elements in an arbitrary ring (Q2273882)

In this paper the authors prove the following result: Let $R$ be a ring of bounded index $n$ for which there exists an element whose nonzero $n-1$ power is von Neumann regular. We have: \begin{itemize} \item if $R$ is prime, then it is isomorphic to a matrix ring over a unital domain; \item if $R$ is indecomposable, then it is isomorphic to a matrix ring over a unital ring without nilpotent elements; \item if $R$ is von Neumann regular, then it is isomorphic to a matrix ring over an abelian regular ring, and, therefore, \item if $R$ is prime and von Neumann regular, it is isomorphic to a matrix ring over a division ring. \end{itemize} The key tool of this result is a Jordan decomposition of any nilpotent element of index $n$ whose $n-1$ power is von Neumann regular. This elements can be decomposed into an orthogonal sum of a Jordan block of size $n$ over a corner of the original ring, and a nilpotent part of lower index. This result generalizes one of [\textit{K. I. Beidar} et al. [Commun. Algebra 32, No. 9, 3543--3562 (2004; Zbl 1074.16005)], where the condition of being von Neumann regular was required for the whole ring.