The global dimension of an f-ring via its space of minimal prime ideals

Abstract

This article examines hereditary f-rings, after first characterizingthe hereditary von Neumann regular commutative rings as those for which the space of maximal ideals is hereditarily paracompact. It is shown that if C ( X , Z ) , the ring of integer-valued continuous functions on a zero-dimensional space X, is hereditary, then X is finite. This is shown two ways; once as a consequence of the following: if A is any singular archimedean f-ring, then A/2A is a boolean ring, and gd(A) >= gd(A/2A)+ 1 , where gd(A) stands for the global dimension of A. As a consequence of this it is also shown that if A is a singular archimedean f-ring and gd(A) <= 2, then Min(A), the space of minimal prime ideals is hereditarily paracompact. The paper concludes with a calculation of the global dimension of a mihereditary singular archimedean f-ring A, in which the cellularityof Min(A) is “much less” than |A| if finite, it is k+2, where Nk = |A|.