Unique irredundant intersections of completely irreducible ideals (Q556973)

For a commutative ring \(R\) with 1, its ideal is called irreducible if it cannot be represented as an intersection of any set of proper overideals. It is known that every ideal is an intersection of completely irreducible ideals. The authors are interested in the property (UIICII) that every (non-zero, proper) ideal can be represented uniquely as an irredundant intersection of completely irreducible ideals. Every proper irreducible ideal of \(R\) is a power of a prime ideal iff the localization \(R_M\) is a noetherian valuation ring, for every maximal ideal of \(M\). The main result states that \(R\) has the UIICII property iff every proper ideal of \(R\) is an irredundant intersection of powers of maximal ideals; given are a number of other equivalent conditions for this property, in general, as well as specializations to special rings, such as arithmetical rings, zero-dimensional rings, one-dimensional integral domains, ZPI rings. Although the rings satisfying UIICII are not always noetherian, their every non-unit is contained in a finitely generated maximal ideal. In case \(R\) is a domain, it has the UIICII property (for non-zero proper ideals) iff \(R\) is almost Dedekind and, for every proper ideal \(A\), the ring \(R/A\) has at least one finitely generated maximal ideal iff \(R\) is almost Dedekind and, for every proper non-zero ideal \(A\) of \(R\), Spec\((R/A)\) is a scattered space iff every non-zero proper ideal of \(R\) has a unique representation as an irredundant intersection of powers of maximal ideals. The authors state two open questions as well.