An Engel condition with skew derivations for one-sided ideals

Abstract

We apply the theory of generalized polynomial identities with automorphisms and skew derivations to prove the following theorem: Let A be a prime ring with the extended centroid C and with two-sided Martindale quotient ring Q, R a nonzero right ideal of A and \(\delta \) a nonzero \(\sigma \)-derivation of A, where \(\sigma \) is an epimorphism of A. For \(x,y\in A\), we set \([x,y] = xy - yx\). If \([[\ldots [[\delta (x^{n_0}),x^{n_1}],x^{n_{2}}],\ldots ],x^{n_k}]=0\) for all \(x\in R\), where \(n_{0},n_{1},\ldots ,n_{k}\) are fixed positive integers, then one of the following conditions holds: (1) A is commutative; (2) \(C\cong GF(2)\), the Galois field of two elements; (3) there exist \(b\in Q\) and \(\lambda \in C\) such that \(\delta (x)=\sigma (x)b-bx\) for all \(x\in A\), \((b-\lambda )R=0\) and \(\sigma (R)=0\). The analogous result for left ideals is also obtained. Our theorems are natural generalizations of the well-known results for derivations obtained by Lanski (Proc Am Math Soc 125:339–345, 1997) and Lee (Can Math Bull 38:445–449, 1995).