Classes of almost clean rings

TL;DR

This paper explores classes of almost clean rings, establishing their properties, characterizations, and connections with other ring classes, including abelian Rickart rings and rings with involution, through various decomposition theorems.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of special almost clean rings and proves an analogous theorem to Camillo-Khurana for abelian Rickart rings, expanding the understanding of ring decompositions.

Findings

Every quasi-continuous and nonsingular module is almost clean.

Every right CS and right nonsingular ring is almost clean.

Abelian Rickart rings are characterized as special almost clean rings.

Abstract

A ring is clean (almost clean) if each of its elements is the sum of a unit (regular element) and an idempotent. A module is clean (almost clean) if its endomorphism ring is clean (almost clean). We show that every quasi-continuous and nonsingular module is almost clean and that every right CS and right nonsingular ring is almost clean. As a corollary, all right strongly semihereditary rings, including finite $AW^*$-algebras and noetherian Leavitt path algebras in particular, are almost clean. We say that a ring $R$ is special clean (special almost clean) if each element $a$ can be decomposed as the sum of a unit (regular element) $u$ and an idempotent $e$ with $aR\cap eR=0.$ The Camillo-Khurana Theorem characterizes unit-regular rings as special clean rings. We prove an analogous theorem for abelian Rickart rings: an abelian ring is Rickart if and only if it is special almost clean. As a corollary, we show that a right quasi-continuous and right nonsingular ring is left and right Rickart. If a special (almost) clean decomposition is unique, we say that the ring is uniquely special (almost) clean. We show that (1) an abelian ring is unit-regular (equiv. special clean) if and only if it is uniquely special clean, and that (2) an abelian and right quasi-continuous ring is Rickart (equiv. special almost clean) if and only if it is uniquely special almost clean. Finally, we adapt some of our results to rings with involution: a *-ring is *-clean (almost *-clean) if each of its elements is the sum of a unit (regular element) and a projection (self-adjoint idempotent). A special (almost) *-clean ring is similarly defined by replacing ``idempotent'' with ``projection'' in the appropriate definition. We show that an abelian *-ring is a Rickart *-ring if and only if it is special almost *-clean, and that an abelian *-ring is *-regular if and only if it is special *-clean.