On n-Absorbing Ideals of Commutative Rings

Let R be a commutative ring with 1 ≠ 0 and n a positive integer. In this article, we study two generalizations of a prime ideal. A proper ideal I of R is called an n-absorbing (resp., strongly n-absorbing) ideal if whenever x ₁…x _n+1 ∈ I for x ₁,…, x _n+1 ∈ R (resp., I ₁…I _n+1 ? I for ideals I ₁,…, I _n+1 of R), then there are n of the x _i 's (resp., n of the I _i 's) whose product is in I. We investigate n-absorbing and strongly n-absorbing ideals, and we conjecture that these two concepts are equivalent. In particular, we study the stability of n-absorbing ideals with respect to various ring-theoretic constructions and study n-absorbing ideals in several classes of commutative rings. For example, in a Noetherian ring every proper ideal is an n-absorbing ideal for some positive integer n, and in a Prüfer domain, an ideal is an n-absorbing ideal for some positive integer n if and only if it is a product of prime ideals.