A further study of quandles and quandle rings

Abstract

We investigate core quandles and idempotents in quandle rings of core quandles. We answer several questions on the rank of core quandles and nontrivial idempotents in quandle rings. We also present solutions to two questions raised in a recent paper about non-trivial idempotents in quandle rings $\mathbb{Z}[R_5]$ and $\mathbb{Z}[C_5]$, where $\mathbb{Z}$, $R_5$ and $C_5$ are the ring of integers, the dihedral quandle of order 5, and the commutative quandle of order 5, respectively. We then study units in extended quandle rings of a trivial quandle and the Joyce quandle, and nilpotent elements in extended quandles rings of a trivial quandle, where the ground ring is an integral domain. As a consequence, we show that the quandle ring and the extended quandle ring of a trivial quandle are not nil clean rings. We also explore prime rings and semi-prime rings among quandle rings. We introduce zero-divisor graphs of quandle rings and find an intriguing mirror symmetry among the in-degree and out-degree of the vertices. Moreover, we find a bivariate polynomial in the ring $(\mathbb{Z}_{2n+1}[Q])[X,Y]$ that determines the commutative quandle of order $2n+1$, where $2n+1$ is prime.