On regular ideals in reduced rings

Let R be a commutative ring with identity and X be a Tychonoff space. An ideal I of R is Von Neumann regular (briefly, regular) if for every a ? I, there exists b ? R such that a = a2b. In the present paper, we obtain the general form of a regular ideal in C(X) which is OA, for some closed subset A of ?X, for which Ac?X ? (P(X))?, where P(X) is the set of all P-points of X. We show that the ideals and subrings such as CK(X), C?(X), C?(X), SocmC(X) and M?X\X are regular if and only if they are equal to the socle of C(X). We carry further the study of the maximal regular ideal, for instance, it is shown that for a vast class of topological spaces (we call them OPD-spaces) the maximal regular ideal is OX\I(X), where I(X) is the set of isolated points of X. Also, for this class, the socle of C(X) is the maximal regular ideal if and only if I(X) contains no infinite closed set. We also show that C(X) contains an ideal which is both essential and regular if and only if (P(X))? is dense in X. Finally it is shown that, for semiprimitive rings pure ideals are of the form OA which A is a closed subset of Max(R), also a P-point of X = Max(R) is introduced and it is shown that the maximal regular ideal of an arbitrary ring R is OX\P(X), which P(X) is the set of P-points of X = Max(R).

A CLOSURE OPERATION IN RINGS

We study the operation E → cl (E) defined on subsets E of a unital ring R, where x ∈ cl (E) if (x + Rb) ∩ E ≠ ∅ for each b in R such that Rx + Rb = R. This operation, which strongly resembles a closure, originates in algebraic K-theory. For any left ideal L we show that cl (L) equals the intersection of the maximal left ideals of R containing L. Moreover, cl (Re) = Re + rad (R) if e is an idempotent in R, and cl (I) = I for a two-sided ideal I precisely when I is semi-primitive in R (i.e. rad (R/I) = 0). We then explore a special class of von Neumann regular elements in R, called persistently regular and characterized by forming an "open" subset Rpr in R, i.e. cl (R\Rpr) = R\Rpr. In fact, R\Rpr = cl (R\Rr), so that Rpr is the "algebraic interior" of the set Rr of regular elements. We show that a regular element x with partial inverse y is persistently regular, if and only if the skew corner (1 - xy)R(1 - yx) is contained in Rr. If I reg (R) denotes the maximal regular ideal in R and [Formula: see text] the set of quasi-invertible elements, defined and studied in [4], we prove that [Formula: see text]. Specializing to C*-algebras we prove that cl (E) coincides with the norm closure of E, when E is one of the five interesting sets R-1, [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text], and that Rpr coincides with the topological interior of Rr. We also show that the operation cl respects boundedness, self-adjointness and positivity.