SOME REMARKS ON PRIMAL IDEALS

Every ring considered in the paper will be assumed to be commutative and have a unit element. An ideal A of a ring R will be called primal if the elements of R which are zero divisors modulo A, form an ideal of R, say pp. If A is a primal ideal of R, P is called the adjoint ideal of A. The adjoint ideal of a primal ideal is prime [2]. The definition of primal ideals may also be formulated as follows: An ideal A of a ring R is primal if in the residue class ring R/A the zero divisors form an ideal of R/A. If Q is a primary idel of a ring R then every zero divisor of R/Q is nilpotent; therefore, Q is a primal ideal of R. That a primal ideal need not be primary, is shown by an example in [2]. Let R[X], and R[[X]] denote the polynomial ring and formal power series ring in an indeterminate X over a ring R, respectively. Let S be a multiplicative system in a ring R and S$^{-1}$ R the quotient ring of R. Let Q be a P-primary ideal of a ring R. Then Q[X] is a P[X]-primary ideal of R[X], and S$^{-1}$ Q is a S$^{-1}$ P-primary ideal of a ring S$^{-1}$ R if S.cap.P=.phi., and Q[[X]] is a P[[X]]-primary ideal of R[[X]] if R is Noetherian [1]. We search for analogous results when primary ideals are replaced with primal ideals. To show an ideal A of a ring R to be primal, it sufficies to show that a-b is a zero divisor modulo A whenever a and b are zero divisors modulo A.