In a Noetherian ring, an ideal disjoint from a nonempty multiplicative subset extends to an ideal maximal among those disjoint from , by the ascending chain condition. It is proper. If but neither factor belongs to , both and meet . Multiplying such representatives puts an element of in , a contradiction. Thus is a prime ideal. For a general commutative ring the same argument follows after applying the Zorn lemma to disjoint ideals; the union of a chain is disjoint from .
For a nonzero ideal in a Dedekind domain, is the exponent of the nonzero prime ideal in the unique factorization of ideals in a Dedekind domain. Then if and only if for every , and .
The prime radical is the intersection of all prime ideals of a noncommutative ring. For a nonzero ring satisfying the ascending chain condition on two-sided ideals, there exist prime ideals of a noncommutative ring with . Indeed, a maximal counterexample among two-sided ideals could not itself be a prime ideal of a noncommutative ring, and two larger witness ideals would contradict its maximality. Every prime ideal of a noncommutative ring contains one , so the intersection equals , and its th power is zero. This nilpotence assertion fails without a chain condition.
Let be finite-dimensional commutative algebras, let and be ideals, and let be a surjective algebra homomorphism. The ideals need not have identities. Then gives a bijection between the primitive idempotents of lying in with nonzero image and the primitive idempotents of .
Decompose into its commutative Artinian local rings , with identities . Each is either all of , in which case , or a proper ideal and therefore a nilpotent ideal. The sum of the latter ideals is nilpotent, so its image contributes no idempotents. Each nonzero has local corner algebra , a quotient of , so is primitive. These idempotents are orthogonal, and the remaining part of is nilpotent; hence they are exactly its primitive idempotents. This statement does not require the entire kernel of to be nilpotent.
Radical of an ideal Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-06
The radical of an ideal is
An ideal equal to its radical is a radical ideal.
Rees module 2026-10-06
The Rees module of an -module with respect to an ideal is , a graded module over the Rees ring . Generators of in degree zero generate this module. For , the graded submodule is finitely generated when is a Noetherian ring; a bound on its generators' degrees yields the Artin-Rees lemma.
Right ideal Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-06
A right ideal in a unital associative algebra is a vector subspace with , equivalently a submodule of the right regular module. It need not be a left ideal. Its finite generation refers to right multiplication by elements of .
Semigroup algebra 2026-10-06
For an additive semigroup with identity zero, the semigroup algebra has a -basis of formal symbols , , and multiplication . For it is the integral domain . Its positive-exponent ideal is a nonzero idempotent ideal, and the strictly ascending chain shows that the algebra is not a Noetherian ring.
Square-zero ideal 2026-09-24
A square-zero ideal is an ideal satisfying , so every product of two elements of vanishes.
Topological ring Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-07
A topological ring is a ring equipped with a topology making addition, additive inversion and multiplication continuous functions. An adic topology is obtained from powers of an ideal.
Every ideal of a Dedekind domain is generated by at most two elements. Given a nonzero ideal and any prescribed nonzero , the Chinese remainder theorem supplies with at every prime ideal dividing . The prime-ideal valuation in a Dedekind domain then gives .
In , the ideals , and are pairwise incomparable and nonprime. Their union is the ideal : the three lines cover its two-dimensional vector space over . This shows why a primality hypothesis matters in prime avoidance.
Every nonzero proper ideal of a Dedekind domain has a unique factorization, up to reordering, as a finite product of positive powers of distinct nonzero prime ideals. The unit ideal is the empty product. This is distinct from unique factorization of elements.
In , the ideal has radical of an ideal , a prime ideal, and hence a unique minimal prime ideal. Nevertheless , , and for all , so is not a primary ideal. The same example works after adjoining inverses of and ; thus it also gives an example in a two-variable Laurent polynomial ring.
Unit ideal 2026-10-06
The whole ring , viewed as an ideal. Elements generate the unit ideal exactly when coefficients give .