Nilradical of a ring

For more radicals, see radical of a ring.

In algebra, the nilradical of a commutative ring is the ideal consisting of the nilpotent elements of the ring. In the non-commutative ring case, more care is needed resulting in several related radicals.

Commutative rings

The nilradical of a commutative ring is the set of all nilpotent elements in the ring, or equivalently the radical of the zero ideal. This is an ideal because the sum of any two nilpotent elements is nilpotent, and the product of any element with a nilpotent element is nilpotent. It can also be characterized as the intersection of all the prime ideals of the ring. If the ring is artinian, the nilradical is its maximal nilpotent ideal.

Noncommutative rings

For noncommutative rings, there are several analogues of the nilradical. The lower nilradical (or Baer–McCoy radical, or prime radical) is the analogue of the radical of the zero ideal and is defined as the intersection of the prime ideals of the ring. The analogue of the set of all nilpotent elements is the upper nilradical and is defined as the ideal generated by all nil ideals of the ring, which is itself a nil ideal. The set of all nilpotent elements itself need not be an ideal (or even a subgroup), so the upper nilradical can be much smaller than this set. The Levitzki radical is in between and is defined as the largest locally nilpotent ideal. As in the commutative case, when the ring is artinian, the Levitzki radical is nilpotent and so is the unique largest nilpotent ideal. Indeed, if the ring is merely noetherian, then the lower, upper, and Levitzki radical are nilpotent and coincide, allowing the nilradical of any noetherian ring to be defined as the unique largest (left, right, or two-sided) nilpotent ideal of the ring.

See also

• Jacobson radical
• minimal prime ideal
• nilradical of a Lie algebra

References

• Eisenbud, David, "Commutative Algebra with a View Toward Algebraic Geometry", Graduate Texts in Mathematics, 150, Springer-Verlag, 1995, ISBN 0-387-94268-8.
• Lam, Tsit-Yuen (2001), A First Course in Noncommutative Rings (2nd ed.), Berlin, New York: Springer-Verlag, ISBN 978-0-387-95325-0, MR1838439