Strongly clean matrix rings over commutative local rings. (Q2456403)

Throughout \(R\) is an associative ring with identity. A ring is called strongly clean if every element is the sum of an idempotent and a unit that commute with each other. The authors completely characterize the commutative local rings \(R\) for which the matrix ring \(\mathbb{M}_n(R)\) is strongly clean, in terms of factorization in \(R[t]\). Among several other results, it is shown that for any monic polynomial \(f\in R[t]\) , the strong cleanness of the companion matrix of \(f\) is equivalent to the strong cleanness of all matrices with characteristic polynomial \(f\). Various interesting examples are given and open questions are raised.