Stable range one for rings with central units

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to give a partial positive answer to a question raised by Khurana et al. as to whether a ring $R$ with stable range one and central units is commutative. We show that this is the case under any of the following additional conditions: $R$ is semiprime or $R$ is one-sided Noetherian or $R$ has unit-stable range $1$ or $R$ has classical Krull dimension $0$ or $R$ is an algebra over a field $K$ such that $K$ is uncountable and $R$ has only countably many primitive ideals or $R$ is affine and either $K$ has characteristic $0$ or has infinite transcendental degree over its prime subfield or is algebraically closed. However, the general question remains open.