Virtually Semisimple Modules and a Generalization of the Wedderburn-Artin Theorem ∗†‡ M. Behboodia,b,§ A. Daneshvara and M. R. Vedadia aDepartment of Mathematical Sciences, Isfahan University of Technology P.O.Box : 84156-83111, Isfahan, Iran bSchool of Mathematics, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM) P.O.Box : 19395-5746, Tehran, Iran
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Abstract By any measure, semisimple modules form one of the most important classes of mod- ules and play a distinguished role in the module theory and its applications. One of the most fundamental results in this area is the Wedderburn-Artin theorem. In this paper, we establish natural generalizations of semisimple modules and give a generalization of the Wedderburn-Artin theorem. We study modules in which every submodule is isomorphic to a direct summand and name them virtually semisimple modules. A module RM is called completely virtually semisimple if each submodules of M is a virtually semisimple module. A ring R is then called left (completely) vir- tually semisimple if RR is a left (compleatly) virtually semisimple R-module. Among other things, we give several characterizations of left (completely) virtually semisimple arXiv:1603.05647v2 [math.RA] 31 May 2016 rings. For instance, it is shown that a ring R is left completely virtually semisimple if ∼ k and only if R = Qi=1 Mni (Di) where k,n1, ..., nk ∈ N and each Di is a principal left ideal domain. Moreover, the integers k, n1, ..., nk and the principal left ideal domains D1, ..., Dk are uniquely determined (up to isomorphism) by R.