A recursive construction of units in a class of rings

Abstract

Let $R$ be an associative ring with identity and let $N$ be a nil ideal of $R$. It is shown that units of $R/N$ can be lifted to units in $R$. Under some mild conditions on the ring, a procedure is given to determine those lifted units in a recursive way. As an application, the units of several classes of rings are determined, including: matrix rings, chain rings, and group rings where the ring is a chain ring. Numerical examples are given illustrating the main results.