A closer look at primal and pseudo-irreducible ideals with applications to rings of functions

Abstract

We return to the work of Banaschewski and extract from it a theorem of Fuchs, Heinzer, and Olberding. As an application of Fuchs-Heinzer-Olberding’s theorem, we generalize a result of Gillman and Kohls. We study pseudo-irreducible ideals and show that every ideal of a pm-ring is the (not necessarily finite) intersection of pairwise comaximal pseudo-irreducible ideals. After some general results, the article focuses on primal and pseudo-irreducible ideals in rings of continuous functions. We determine when every pseudo-irreducible ideal of C(X) is primal. We give a characterization of spaces X for which every Op is a primal ideal of C(X).