Intersections of Primary Ideals in Rings of Continuous Functions

Abstract

Let C be the ring of all real valued continuous functions on a completely regular topological space. This paper is an investigation of the ideals of C that are intersections of prime or of primary ideals.C. W. Kohls has analyzed the prime ideals of C in [3 ; 4] and the primary ideals of C in [5]. He showed that these ideals are absolutely convex. (An ideal I of C is called absolutely convex if |f| ≦ |g| and g ∈ I imply that f ∈ I.) It follows that any intersection of prime or of primary ideals is absolutely convex. We consider here the problem of finding a necessary and sufficient condition for an absolutely convex ideal I of C to be an intersection of prime ideals and the problem of finding a necessary and sufficient condition for I to be an intersection of primary ideals.