Nil-good and nil-good clean matrix rings

Abstract

The notion of clean rings and 2-good rings have many variations, and have been widely studied. We provide a few results about two new variations of these concepts and discuss the theory that ties these variations to objects and properties of interest to noncommutative algebraists. A ring is called nil-good if each element in the ring is the sum of a nilpotent element and either a unit or zero. We establish that the ring of endomorphisms of a module over a division is nil-good, as well as some basic consequences. We then define a new property we call nil-good clean, the condition that an element of a ring is the sum of a nilpotent, an idempotent, and a unit. We explore the interplay between these properties and the notion of clean rings.