Commutative Rings Whose Zero-Divisor Graphs Have Positive Genus

Abstract

It was shown by C. Wickham [12] that “for a fixed positive integer g, there are finitely many isomorphism classes of finite commutative rings whose zero-divisor graph has genus g.” In this note, we give a short direct proof for this result. Moreover, we show that, if the zero-divisor graph of a commutative ring R has finite genus g, then either g = 0 or R is a finite ring. This immediately generalizes Wickham's theorem to arbitrary (not necessary finite) commutative rings.