Weakly stable ideals of exchange rings. (Q928366)

Relations among (von Neumann) regularity, the exchange property, direct sum cancellation, and diagonal reduction of matrices have been studied by many authors. Here several of the known results are extended to the setting of a weakly stable ideal \(I\) in an exchange ring \(R\). (Weak stability means that every regular element of \(1+I\) is one-sided unit-regular in \(R\).) First, the author proves that the matrix ideal \(M_n(I)\) of \(M_n(R)\) is weakly stable, for all \(n\). This generalizes his earlier result that matrix rings over one-sided unit-regular rings are one-sided unit-regular [Commun. Algebra 25, No. 11, 3531-3543 (1997; Zbl 0887.16001)]. Next, he shows that if \(A\) is a finitely generated projective right \(R\)-module satisfying \(AI=A\), and \(B,C\) are right \(R\)-modules with \(A\oplus B\cong A\oplus C\), then one of \(B\) or \(C\) is isomorphic to a direct summand of the other. This generalizes \textit{G. Ehrlich}'s cancellation theorem for one-sided unit-regular rings [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 216, 81-90 (1976; Zbl 0298.16012)]. Finally, the author proves that every regular square matrix \(A\) over \(I\) admits a diagonal reduction \(UAV\) with \(U\) and \(V\) one-sided invertible; when \(R\) is regular, \(U\) and \(V\) can be chosen to be invertible. This generalizes the unit-regular case of the diagonalization theorem of \textit{P. Ara, K. C. O'Meara, E. Pardo} and the reviewer [Linear Algebra Appl. 265, 147-163 (1997; Zbl 0883.15006)].