Strong cleanness of the \(2\times 2\) matrix ring over a general local ring. (Q952541)

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 deal with the problem of completely characterizing the local rings for which the matrix ring \(\mathbb{M}_n(R)\) is strongly clean, and solve the case \(n=2\). They also give applications and examples, and give a characterization when the \(2\times 2\) matrix ring over a local ring is strongly \(\pi\)-regular.