Structure and topological conditions of NI rings. (Q852670)

Rings considered in this paper are associative with identity. For a given ring \(R\), \(N_*(R)\) denotes the prime radical of \(R\), \(N^*(R) \) is the nilradical of \(R\) and \(N(R)\) stands for the set of all nilpotent elements in \(R\). A ring with no nonzero nil ideals is called nil-semisimple. A prime ideal \(P\) of a ring \(R\) is called strongly prime if \(R/P\) is nil-semisimple and \(P\) is completely prime if \(R/P\) is a domain. A ring with no nonzero nilpotent elements is called reduced. A ring \(R\) is 2-primal if \(N_*(R)=N(R)\) and it is NI if \(N^*(R)=N(R) \). In this paper the authors study NI rings. The paper consists of four parts. In the first part the authors observe that 2-primal rings are NI but the converse does not hold. They introduce a simple way to construct an NI ring which is not 2-primal from any given 2-primal ring. They also give conditions under which NI rings and 2-primal rings coincide. In the second part of the paper the authors study the structure of NI rings relating to strongly prime ideals. They give many interesting necessary and sufficient conditions for a ring \(R\) to be NI. They also obtain a connection between minimal strongly prime ideals and multiplicative monoids and show that a minimal strongly prime ideal of a subring of an NI ring \(R\) can be lifted to a minimal strongly prime ideal of \(R\). Moreover, the authors show that the class of NI rings is closed under extensions, subrings and direct sums but neither is it closed under factor rings nor under direct products on infinite index sets. Finally they show that for any NI ring \(R\), \(N^*(M_n(R))=M_n(N(R))\), \(J(R[x])=N(R)[x]\), where \(M_n(R) \) is the \(n\times n\) matrix ring over \(R\) and \(J(R[x])\) is the Jacobson radical of the polynomial ring \(R[x]\) with an indeterminate \(x\) over \(R\) and that \(ab=1\) implies \(ba=1\) for any \(a,b\in R\). The third part is on topological conditions for NI rings. A ring is called pm if every prime ideal is contained in a unique maximal ideal in it. A ring is called weakly pm if every strongly prime ideal is contained in a unique maximal ideal in it. For a ring \(R\), the authors write \(\text{SSpec}(R)\) and \(\text{Max}(R)\) for the space of all strongly prime ideals of \(R\) and the subspace of all maximal ideals of \(R\), respectively. They denote the lattice of all ideals of \(R\) by \(\text{Idl}(R)\). \(\text{Idl}(R)\) is called normal if for each pair \(I_1,I_2\in\text{Idl}(R)\) with \(I_1+I_2=R\) there are \(J_1,J_2\in\text{Idl}(R)\) such that \(I_1+J_1=R=I_2+J_2\) and \(J_1J_2=0\). A ring \(R\) is called symmetric when \(rst=0\) implies \(rts=0\) for all \(r,s,t\in R\). The authors prove that the following conditions are equivalent for an NI ring \(R\): (1) \(R\) is weakly pm, (2) \(\text{SSpec}(R)\) is normal, (3) \(\text{Max}(R)\) is a retract of \(\text{SSpec}(R)\). In this situation \(\text{Max}(R)\) is Hausdorff. This generalizes Sun's result for 2-primal rings. The authors also show that for a symmetric ring \(R\) the following conditions are equivalent: (1) \(R\) is weakly pm, (2) \(R\) is pm, (3) \(\text{Idl}(R)\) is normal. In the fourth part of the paper the authors study some extensions of an NI ring \(R\) such as \(n\times n\) upper triangular matrix ring over \(R\), polynomial ring \(R[X] \) and formal power series ring \(R[\![X]\!]\), respectively, where \(X\) is any set of commuting variables over \(R\) as well as Dorroh extension. They either conclude that the extensions are also NI or give conditions under which they can be NI. For example, the authors show that \(R\) is NI if and only if so is the \(n\times n\) upper triangular matrix ring over \(R\), where \(n\) is a positive integer. Also, for a ring \(R\) with nilpotent \(N^*(R) \) the following conditions are equivalent: (1) \(R\) is NI, (2) \(R[X] \) is NI, (3) \(R[\![X]\!]\) is NI.