ON CLEAN LAURENT SERIES RINGS

Here we prove that, for a $2$-primal ring $R$, the Laurent series ring $R((x))$ is a clean ring if and only if $R$ is a semiregular ring with $J(R)$ nil. This disproves the claim in K. I. Sonin [‘Semiprime and semiperfect rings of Laurent series’, Math. Notes 60 (1996), 222–226] that the Laurent series ring over a clean ring is again clean. As an application of the result, it is shown that, for a $2$-primal ring $R$, $R((x))$ is semiperfect if and only if $R((x))$ is semiregular if and only if $R$ is semiperfect with $J(R)$ nil.