HULLS OF SEMIPRIME RINGS WITH APPLICATIONS TO C¤-ALGEBRAS Gary F. Birkenmeier1; y, Jae Keol Park2 and S. Tariq Rizvi3 1Department of Mathematics, University of Louisiana at Lafayette Lafayette, LA 70504-1010, U. S. A.
[email protected] 2Department of Mathematics, Busan National University Busan 609-735, South Korea
[email protected] 3Department of Mathematics, Ohio State University Lima, OH 45804-3576, U. S. A.
[email protected] Abstract. For a ring R, we investigate and determine “minimal” right essential overrings (called right ring hulls) belonging to certain classes of rings which are generated by R and subsets of the central idempotents of Q(R), where Q(R) is the maximal right ring of quotients of R. We show the existence of a quasi-Baer hull and a right FI-extending hull for every semiprime ring and explicitly describe these. Our results include: (i) RB(Q(R)) (i.e., the subring of Q(R) generated by fre j r 2 R and e 2 B(Q(R))g, where B(Q(R)) is the set of all central idempotents of Q(R)) is the smallest quasi-Baer and the smallest right FI-extending right ring of quotients of a semiprime ring R with unity. In this case, various overrings of RB(Q(R)), including all right essential overrings of R, are also quasi-Baer and right FI-extending; (ii) lying over, going up, and incomparability of prime ideals, various regularity conditions, and classical Krull dimension transfer between R and RB(Q(R)); and (iii) the existence of a boundedly centrally closed hull for every C¤-algebra and a complete characterization for an intermediate C¤-algebra between ¤ ¤ a C -algebra A and its local multiplier C -algebra Mloc(A) to be boundedly centrally closed.