Crossed products over prime rings

In this paper we obtain necessary and sufficient conditions for the crossed productR *G to be prime or semiprime under the assumption thatR is prime. The main techniques used are the Δ-methods which reduce these questions to the finite normal subgroups ofG and a study of theX-inner automorphisms ofR which enables us to handle these finite groups. In particular we show thatR *G is semiprime ifR has characteristic 0. Furthermore, ifR has characteristicp>0, thenR *G is semiprime if and only ifR *P is semiprime for all elementary abelianp-subgroupsP of Δ⁺(G) ∩G _inn.