RINGS OVER WHICH COEFFICIENTS OF NILPOTENT POLYNOMIALS ARE NILPOTENT

Abstract

Antoine studied conditions which are connected to the question of Amitsur of whether or not a polynomial ring over a nil ring is nil, observing the structure of nilpotent elements in Armendariz rings and introducing the notion of nil-Armendariz rings. The class of nil-Armendariz rings contains Armendariz rings and NI rings. We continue the study of nil-Armendariz rings, concentrating on the structure of rings over which coefficients of nilpotent polynomials are nilpotent. In the procedure we introduce the notion of CN-rings that is a generalization of nil-Armendariz rings. We first construct a CN-ring but not nil-Armendariz. This may be a base on which Antoine's theory can be applied and elaborated. We investigate basic ring theoretic properties of CN-rings, and observe various kinds of CN-rings including ordinary ring extensions. It is shown that a ring R is CN if and only if R is nil-Armendariz if and only if R is Armendariz if and only if R is reduced when R is a von Neumann regular ring.