Ideal-Symmetric and Semiprime Rings

Lambek extended the usual commutative ideal theory to ideals in noncommutative rings, calling an ideal A of a ring R symmetric if rst ∈ A implies rts ∈ A for r, s, t ∈ R. R is usually called symmetric if 0 is a symmetric ideal. This naturally gives rise to extending the study of symmetric ring property to the lattice of ideals. In the process, we introduce the concept of an ideal-symmetric ring. We first characterize the class of ideal-symmetric rings and show that this ideal-symmetric property is Morita invariant. We provide a method of constructing an ideal-symmetric ring (but not semiprime) from any given semiprime ring, noting that semiprime rings are ideal-symmetric. We investigate the structure of minimal ideal-symmetric rings completely, finding two kinds of basic forms of finite ideal-symmetric rings. It is also shown that the ideal-symmetric property can go up to right quotient rings in relation with regular elements. The polynomial ring Rx] over an ideal-symmetric ring R need not be ideal-symmetric, but it is shown that the factor ring Rx]/xⁿRx] is ideal-symmetric over a semiprime ring R.