Ring

In mathematics, a ring is one of the fundamental algebraic structures used in abstract algebra. It
consists of a set equipped with two binary operations that generalize the arithmetic
operations of addition and multiplication. Through this generalization, theorems from arithmetic are
extended to non-numerical objects such as polynomials, series, matrices and functions.
The conceptualization of rings started in the 1870s and completed in the 1920s. Key contributors
include Dedekind, Hilbert, Fraenkel, and Noether. Rings were first formalized as a generalization
of Dedekind domains that occur in number theory, and of polynomial rings and rings of invariants
that occur in algebraic geometry and invariant theory. Afterward, they also proved to be useful in
other branches of mathematics such as geometry and mathematical analysis.
A ring is an abelian group with a second binary operation that is associative, is distributive over the
abelian group operation, and has an identity element. By extension from the integers, the abelian
group operation is called addition and the second binary operation is called multiplication.
Whether a ring is commutative or not (i.e., whether the order in which two elements are multiplied
changes or not the result) has profound implications on its behavior as an abstract object. As a
result, commutative ring theory, commonly known as commutative algebra, is a key topic in ring
theory. Its development has been greatly influenced by problems and ideas occurring naturally
in algebraic number theory and algebraic geometry. Examples of commutative rings include the set
of integers equipped with the addition and multiplication operations, the set of polynomials equipped
with the addition and multiplication of functions, the coordinate ring of an affine algebraic variety, and
the ring of integers of a number field. Examples of noncommutative rings include the ring
of n n real square matrices with n 2, group rings in representation theory, operator
algebras in functional analysis, rings of differential operators in the theory of differential operators,
and the cohomology ring of a topological space in topology.

Definition and illustration

The most familiar example of a ring is the set of all integers, , consisting of the numbers
. . . , 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, . . .
The familiar properties for addition and multiplication of integers serve as a model for the axioms for
rings.

Definition
A ring is a set R equipped with binary operations[1] + and satisfying the following three sets of
axioms, called the ring axioms
1. R is an abelian group under addition, meaning that
(a + b) + c = a + (b + c) for all a, b, c in (+ is associative).
a + b = b + a for all a, b in (+ is commutative).
There is an element 0 in such that a + 0 = a for all a in (0 is the additive identity).
For each a in there exists a in such that a + (a) = 0 (a is the additive inverse of a).

2. is a monoid under multiplication, meaning that:

(a b) c = a (b c) for all a, b, c in ( is associative).
There is an element 1 in such that a 1 = a and 1 a = a for all a in (1 is the multiplicative

identity).[5]
3. Multiplication is distributive with respect to addition:
a (b + c) = (a b) + (a c) for all a, b, c in (left distributivity).
(b + c) a = (b a) + (c a) for all a, b, c in (right distributivity).

Notes on the definition

As explained in History below, many authors follow an alternative convention in which a ring is not
defined to have a multiplicative identity. This article adopts the convention that, unless otherwise
stated, a ring is assumed to have such an identity. A structure satisfying all the
axioms except possibly the existence of a multiplicative identity 1 is called a rng (or
sometimes pseudo-ring). For example, the set of even integers with the usual + and is a rng, but
not a ring.
The operations + and are called addition and multiplication, respectively. The multiplication symbol
is often omitted, so the juxtaposition of ring elements is interpreted as multiplication. For
example, xy means x y.
Although ring addition is commutative, ring multiplication is not required to be commutative: ab need
not necessarily equal ba. Rings that also satisfy commutativity for multiplication (such as the ring
of integers) are called commutative rings. Books on commutative algebra or algebraic geometry
often adopt the convention that "ring" means "commutative ring", to simplify terminology.
The additive group of a ring is the ring equipped just with the structure of addition. Although the
definition assumes that the additive group is abelian, this can be inferred from the other ring
axioms.[6]

Basic properties
Some basic properties of a ring follow immediately from the axioms:

The additive identity, the additive inverse of each element, and the multiplicative identity are
unique.

For any element x in a ring R, one has x0 = 0 = 0x and (1)x = x.

If 0 = 1 in a ring R (or more generally, 0 is a unit element), then R has only one element, and is
called the zero ring.

The binomial formula holds for any commuting pair of elements (i.e., any x and y such
that xy = yx).

Example: Integers modulo 4

0, 1, 2, 3 with the following operations:
The sum x y in 4 is the remainder when the integer x + y is divided by 4. For
example,
and
.
The product x y in 4 is the remainder when the integer xy is divided by 4. For

Equip the set

example,
and
.
Then Z4 is a ring: each axiom follows from the corresponding axiom for Z. If x is an integer, the
remainder of x when divided by 4 is an element of Z4, and this element is often denoted by "x mod
4"or

, which is consistent with the notation for 0,1,2,3. The additive inverse of any

in Z4 is

For example,

Example: 2-by-2 matrices

The set of 2-by-2 matrices with real number entries is written

With the operations of matrix addition and matrix multiplication, this set satisfies the above ring
axioms. The element

is the multiplicative identity of the ring.

0 1
0 1
0 0
1 0
If A
and
, then AB
while BA
,
1 0
0 0
0 1
0 0

this example shows that the ring is noncommutative.

More generally, for any ring , commutative or not, and any nonnegative integer n, one may form
the ring of n-by-n matrices with entries in : see matrix ring.

History
Dedekind
The study of rings originated from the theory of polynomial rings and the theory of algebraic
integers. In 1871, Richard Dedekind defined the concept of the ring of integers of a number field. In
this context, he introduced the terms "ideal" and "module" and studied their properties. But Dedekind
did not use the term "ring" and did not define the concept of a ring in a general setting.

Hilbert
The term "Zahlring" (number ring) was coined by David Hilbert in 1892 and published in 1897.[9] In
19th century German, the word "Ring" could mean "association", which is still used today in English
in a limited sense (e.g., spy ring),[10] so if that were the etymology then it would be similar to the way
"group" entered mathematics by being a non-technical word for "collection of related things".
According to Harvey Cohn, Hilbert used the term for a ring that had the property of "circling directly
back" to an element of itself. Specifically, in a ring of algebraic integers, all high powers of an
algebraic integer can be written as an integral combination of a fixed set of lower powers, and thus
the powers "cycle back". For instance, if a3 4a + 1 = 0 then a3 = 4a 1, a4 = 4a2 a, a5 = a2 +

16a 4, a6 = 16a2 8a + 1, a7 = 8a2 + 65a 16, and so on; in general, an is going to be an integral
linear combination of 1, a, and a2.

Fraenkel and Noether

The first axiomatic definition of a ring was given by Adolf Fraenkel in 1914, but his axioms were
stricter than those in the modern definition. For instance, he required every non-zero-divisor to have
a multiplicative inverse.[14] In 1921, Emmy Noether gave the modern axiomatic definition
of (commutative) ring and developed the foundations of commutative ring theory in her monumental
paper Idealtheorie in Ringbereichen.[15]

Multiplicative identity: mandatory vs. optional

Fraenkel required a ring to have a multiplicative identity 1, whereas Noether did not.
Most or all books on algebra up to around 1960 followed Noether's convention of not requiring a 1.
Starting in the 1960s, it became increasingly common to see books including the existence of 1 in
the definition of ring, especially in advanced books by notable authors such as Artin, Atiyah and
MacDonald, Bourbaki, Eisenbud, and Lang. But even today, there remain many books that do not
require a 1.
Faced with this terminological ambiguity, some authors have tried to impose their views, while others
have tried to adopt more precise terms.
In the first category, we find for instance Gardner and Wiegandt, who argue that if one requires all
rings to have a 1, then some consequences include the lack of existence of infinite direct sums of
rings, and the fact that proper direct summands of rings are not subrings. They conclude that "in
many, maybe most, branches of ring theory the requirement of the existence of a unity element is
not sensible, and therefore unacceptable."
In the second category, we find authors who use the following terms:
rings with multiplicative identity: unital ring, unitary ring, ring with unity, ring with identity, or ring

with 1
rings not requiring multiplicative identity: rng or pseudo-ring.

Basic examples
Commutative rings:

The prototype example is the ring of integers with the two operations of addition and
multiplication.

The rational, real and complex numbers are commutative rings of a type called fields.

An algebra over a ring is itself a ring. These are also modules. Some examples:

Any algebra over a field.

The polynomial ring R[X] of polynomials over a ring R is itself a ring. A free module over R of
infinite dimension

, the integers with an irrational number c adjoined. A free module of infinite dimension if c is
a transcendental number, a free module of finite dimension if c is an algebraic integer

, the set of fractions whose denominators are a power of n (including negative ones). A nonfree module.
, the set of decimal fractions.
, where d is a square-free integer of the form 4n+1. A free module of rank two.
Cf. Quadratic integers.
, the Gaussian integers.

, the Eisenstein integers. Also their generalization, a Kummer ring.

The set of all algebraic integers forms a ring. This follows for example from the fact that it is
the integral closure of the ring of rational integers in the field of complex numbers. The rings in
the previous example are subrings of this ring.

The set of formal power series R[[X1, , Xn]] over a commutative ring R is a ring.

If S is a set, then the power set of S becomes a ring if we define addition to be the symmetric
difference of sets and multiplication to be intersection. This corresponds to a ring of sets and is
an example of a Boolean ring.

The set of all continuous real-valued functions defined on the real line forms a commutative ring.
The operations are pointwise addition and multiplication of functions.

Let X be a set and R a ring. Then the set of all functions from X to R forms a ring, which is
commutative if R is commutative. The ring of continuous functions in the previous example is a
subring of this ring if X is the real line and R is the field of real numbers.

Noncommutative rings:

For any ring R and any natural number n, the set of all square n-by-n matrices with entries
from R, forms a ring with matrix addition and matrix multiplication as operations. For n = 1, this
matrix ring is isomorphic to R itself. For n > 1 (and R not the zero ring), this matrix ring is
noncommutative.
If G is an abelian group, then the endomorphisms of G form a ring, the endomorphism
ring End(G) of G. The operations in this ring are addition and composition of endomorphisms.
More generally, if V is a left module over a ring R, then the set of all R-linear maps forms a ring,
also called the endomorphism ring and denoted by EndR(V).
If G is a group and R is a ring, the group ring of G over R is a free module over R having G as
basis. Multiplication is defined by the rules that the elements of G commute with the elements
of Rand multiply together as they do in the group G.
Many rings that appear in analysis are noncommutative. For example, most Banach algebras are
noncommutative.
Non-rings:

The set of natural numbers N with the usual operations is not a ring, since (N, +) is not even
a group (the elements are not all invertible with respect to addition). For instance, there is
no natural number which can be added to 3 to get 0 as a result. There is a natural way to make it
a ring by adding negative numbers to the set, thus obtaining the ring of integers. The natural
numbers (including 0) form an algebraic structure known as a semiring (which has all of the
properties of a ring except the additive inverse property).
Let R be the set of all continuous functions on the real line that vanish outside a bounded interval
depending on the function, with addition as usual but with multiplication defined as convolution:

Then R is a rng, but not a ring: the Dirac delta function has the property of a multiplicative identity,
but it is not a function and hence is not an element of R.

Basic concepts
Elements in a ring
A left zero divisor of a ring R is an element in the ring such that there exists a nonzero
element of such that
.[27] A right zero divisor is defined similarly.
A nilpotent element is an element a such that
for some
. One example of a nilpotent
element is a nilpotent matrix. A nilpotent element in a nonzero ring is necessarily a zero divisor.
An idempotent e is an element such that
a projection in linear algebra.

. One example of an idempotent element is

A unit is an element having a multiplicative inverse; in this case the inverse is unique, and is
denoted by
. The set of units of a ring is a group under ring multiplication; this group is denoted by
or
or
. For example, if R is the ring of all square matrices of size n over a field,
then
consists of the set of all invertible matrices of size n, and is called the general linear group.

Subring
A subset S of R is said to be a subring if it can be regarded as a ring with the addition and the
multiplication restricted from R to S. Equivalently, S is a subring if it is not empty, and for
any x, y in S,
,
and
are in S. If all rings have been assumed, by convention, to have
a multiplicative identity, then to be a subring one would also require S to share the same identity
element asR.[28] So if all rings have been assumed to have a multiplicative identity, then a proper
ideal is not a subring.
For example, the ring Z of integers is a subring of the field of real numbers and also a subring of the
ring of polynomials Z[X] (in both cases, Z contains 1, which is the multiplicative identity of the larger
rings). On the other hand, the subset of even integers 2Z does not contain the identity element 1 and
thus does not qualify as a subring.
An intersection of subrings is a subring. The smallest subring containing a given subset E of R is
called a subring generated by E. Such a subring exists since it is the intersection of all subrings
containing E.
For a ring R, the smallest subring containing 1 is called the characteristic subring of R. It can be
obtained by adding copies of 1 and 1 together many times in any mixture. It is possible
that
(n times) can be zero. If n is the smallest positive integer such that this
occurs, then n is called the characteristic of R. In some rings,
is never zero for any positive
integer n, and those rings are said to have characteristic zero.
Given a ring R, let
denote the set of all elements x in R such that x commutes with every
element in R:
for any y in R. Then
is a subring of R; called the center of R. More
generally, given a subset X of R, let S be the set of all elements in R that commute with every
element in X. Then S is a subring of R, called the centralizer (or commutant) of X. The center is the
centralizer of the entire ring R. Elements or subsets of the center are said to be central in R; they
generate a subring of the center.

Ideal
The definition of an ideal in a ring is analogous to that of normal subgroup in a group. But, in
actuality, it plays a role of an idealized generalization of an element in a ring; hence, the name
"ideal". Like elements of rings, the study of ideals is central to structural understanding of a ring.
Let R be a ring. A nonempty subset I of R is then said to be a left ideal in R if, for
any x, y in I and r in R,
and
are in I. If
denotes the span of I over R; i.e., the set of finite
sums
then I is a left ideal if RI I . . Similarly, I is said to be right ideal if IR I . A subset I is said to be
a two-sided ideal or simply ideal if it is both a left ideal and right ideal. A one-sided or two-sided
ideal is then an additive subgroup of R. If E is a subset of R, then
is a left ideal, called the left
ideal generated by E; it is the smallest left ideal containing E. Similarly, one can consider the right
ideal or the two-sided ideal generated by a subset of R.
If x is in R, then
and
are left ideals and right ideals, respectively; they are called
the principal left ideals and right ideals generated by x. The principal ideal
is written as . For
example, the set of all positive and negative multiples of 2 along with 0 form an ideal of the integers,
and this ideal is generated by the integer 2. In fact, every ideal of the ring of integers is principal.
Like a group, a ring is said to be a simple if it is nonzero and it has no proper nonzero two-sided
ideals. A commutative simple ring is precisely a field.
Rings are often studied with special conditions set upon their ideals. For example, a ring in which
there is no strictly increasing infinite chain of left ideals is called a left Noetherian ring. A ring in
which there is no strictly decreasing infinite chain of left ideals is called a left Artinian ring. It is a
somewhat surprising fact that a left Artinian ring is left Noetherian (the HopkinsLevitzki theorem).
The integers, however, form a Noetherian ring which is not Artinian.
For commutative rings, the ideals generalize the classical notion of divisibility and decomposition of
an integer into prime numbers in algebra. A proper ideal P of R is called a prime ideal if for any
elements
we have that
implies either
or
. Equivalently, P is prime if for any
ideals
we have that
implies either
or
This latter formulation illustrates the idea of
ideals as generalizations of elements.

Homomorphism
A homomorphism from a ring (R, +, ) to a ring (S, , *) is a function f from R to S that preserves the
ring operations; namely, such that, for all a, b in R the following identities hold:

f(a + b) = f(a) f(b)

f(a b) = f(a) * f(b)

f(1 ) = 1
R

A ring homomorphism is said to be an isomorphism if there exists an inverse homomorphism

to f (i.e., a ring homomorphism which is an inverse function). Any bijective ring homomorphism is a
ring isomorphism. Two rings
are said to be isomorphic if there is an isomorphism between them
and in that case one writes
. A ring homomorphism between the same ring is called an
endomorphism and an isomorphism between the same ring an automorphism.
Examples:

The function that maps each integer x to its remainder modulo 4 (a number in {0, 1, 2, 3}) is a
homomorphism from the ring Z to the quotient ring Z/4Z ("quotient ring" is defined below).
uxu 1, is a ring homomorphism, called
If is a unit element in a ring R, then R R, x
an inner automorphism of R.
x p , is a ring endmorphism
Let R be a commutative ring of prime characteristic p. Then x
of R called the Frobenius homomorphism.
The Galois group of a field extension L/K is the set of all automorphisms of L whose restrictions
to K are the identity.
For any ring R, there are a unique ring homomorphism Z R and a unique ring
homomorphism R 0.
An epimorphism (i.e., right-cancelable morphism) of rings need not be surjective. For example,
the unique map
is an epimorphism.
An algebra homomorphism from a k-algebra to the endomorphism algebra of a vector space
over k is called a representation of the algebra.

Given a ring homomorphism

, the set of all elements mapped to 0 by f is called
the kernel of f. The kernel is a two-sided ideal of R. The image of f, on the other hand, is not always
an ideal, but it is always a subring of S.
To give a ring homomorphism from a commutative ring R to a ring A with image contained in the
center of A is the same as to give a structure of an algebra over R to A (in particular gives a
structure of A-module).

Quotient ring
The quotient ring of a ring, is analogous to the notion of a quotient group of a group. More formally,
given a ring (R, +, ) and a two-sided ideal I of (R, +, ), the quotient ring (or factor ring) R/I is the
set of cosets of I (with respect to the additive group of (R, +, ); i.e. cosets with respect to (R, +))
together with the operations:
(a + I) + (b + I) = (a + b) + I and
(a + I)(b + I) = (ab) + I
.
for every a, b in R.
Like the case of a quotient group, there is a canonical map
given by
. It is
surjective and satisfies the universal property: if
is a ring homomorphism such that
,
then there is a unique
such that
. In particular, taking I to be the kernel, one sees
that the quotient ring
is isomorphic to the image off; the fact known as the first isomorphism
theorem. The last fact implies that actually any surjective ring homomorphism satisfies the universal
property since the image of such a map is a quotient ring.