Adjoint groups of $p$-nil rings and $p$-group automorphisms

Abstract

We introduce a class of rings, namely the class of left or right $p$-nil rings, for which the adjoint groups behave regularly. Every $p$-ring is close to being left or right $p$-nil in the sense that it contains a large ideal belonging to this class. Also their adjoint groups occur naturally as groups of automorphisms of $p$-groups. These facts and some of their applications are investigated in this paper.