Primitive Rings, Left and Right Minimal Ideals

Left and Right Minimal Ideals

Let R be a semiprime ring, and assume R has a left minimal ideal. Such an ideal is necessarily principal, generated by some x. We will prove the right ideal xR is also minimal.

It is enough to show xy generates x, and hence xR, whenever xy is nonzero. Thus there is no nonzero proper right submodule of xR.

Since 0 is a semiprime ideal, and xy is nonzero, there is some z such that xyzxy is nonzero. Let f be a left R module homomorphism on R, given by right multiplication by yzx. Remember that Rx is simple, so an endomorphism on Rx is trivial, or it is an automorphism. Apply f to Rx and get Rxyzx. Since 1xyzxy is nonzero, 1xyzx is nonzero, and f maps Rx onto Rx.

Let g be the inverse of f. (You can verify g is a left module homomorphism.) Thus x = g(f(x)) = g(xyzx) = xyg(zx), and xy generates x on the right. That completes the proof.

If R is not semiprime, a minimal left ideal need not generate a minimal right ideal. Let R be the upper triangular 2×2 matrices over a division ring K. Matrices with the right column zero form a left ideal, generated by [1,0|0,0]. This is a one dimensional K vector space, and a minimal left ideal. The right ideal generated by [1,0|0,0] consists of matrices with bottom row 0. This is a two dimensional K vector space, and it contains a smaller ideal, generated by [0,1|0,0]. This smaller right ideal has square equal to 0, showing the ring is not semiprime.