Locally finite profinite rings. (Q397979)

In this paper, the authors study weakly locally finite profinite rings, where they call a ring \textit{weakly locally finite} if every \(1\)-generated subring is finite. They show that if such a ring is semisimple (i.e.\ its Jacobson radical is trivial), then it is isomorphic to a direct product of complete matrix rings over finite fields, with only finitely many isomorphism types among the factors. (The converse is easily seen to hold.) On the other hand, they show that a nil profinite ring has finite nilexponent. In particular, the Jacobson radical of a weakly locally finite profinite ring is nil of finite nilexponent. The results generalize corresponding results about small profinite rings and small compact \(G\)-rings. Recall that a profinite ring is small if the group of automorphisms respecting a given profinite system has only countably many orbits on \(n\)-tuples for all \(n<\omega\). If \(G\) is a Polish group, a small compact \(G\)-ring is a compact topological ring together with a group \(G\) of continuous automorphisms with only countably many orbits on \(n\)-tuples for all \(n<\omega\). Such a ring must be profinite, but the group need not respect an inverse system; in both cases smallness implies (full) local finiteness. It has been shown that a small profinite ring has an open ideal of finite nilexponent [\textit{K. Krupiński} and \textit{F. Wagner}, J. Algebra 306, No. 2, 494-506 (2006; Zbl 1110.03017)], and a small compact \(G\)-ring which in addition is \(nm\)-stable (an analogue of model-theoretic stability) must be nilpotent-by-finite, and even null-by-finite if the \(\mathcal{NM}\)-rank is finite [\textit{K. Krupiński}, J. Symb. Log. 76, No. 4, 1403-1417 (2011; Zbl 1244.03113)].