Semiperfect rings with abelian group of units

Abstract

In 1963, Gilmer characterized all finite commutative rings with a cyclic group of units and, in 1967, Eldridge and Fischer generalized these results to rings with minimum condition. In the present paper these results are extended to semiperf ect rings and generalizations of the three theorems are obtained. It is shown that a semiperfect ring with cyclic group of units is finite and is either commutative or is the direct sum of a commutative ring and the 2 x 2 upper triangular matrix ring over the field of two elements. Let R be semiperfect with an abelian group of units. It is shown that R is finite if either the group of units is finite or the group of units is finitely generated and the Jacobson radical is nil. The proofs of all these results depend on our main theorem: The structure of a semiperfect ring R with an abelian group of units is described completely up to the structure of commutative local rings. (That is commutative rings with a unique maximal ideal.) The groups of units of these local rings are shown to be direct factors of the group of units of R.