The structure of a special class of near-rings

Abstract

It is well known that a Boolean ring is isomorphic to a subdirect sum of two-element fields. In [3] a near-ring (B, +, ·) is said to be Boolean if there exists a Boolean ring (B, +, Λ, 1) with identity such that · is defined in terms of +, Λ, and 1 and, for any b ∈ B, b · b = b. A Boolean near-ring B is called special if a · b = (a ν x) Λ b, where x is a fixed element of B. It was pointed out that a special Boolean near-ring is a ring if and only if x = 0. Furthermore, a special Boolean near-ring does not have a right identity unless x = 0. It is natural to ask then whether any Boolean near-ring (which is not a ring) can have a right identity. Also, how are the subdirect structures of a special Boolean near-ring compared to those of a Boolean ring. It is the purpose of this paper to give a negative answer to the first question and to show that the subdirect structures of a special Boolean near- ring are very ‘close’ to those of a Boolean ring. In fact, we will investigate a class of near-rings that include the special Boolean near-rings and the Boolean semi- rings as defined in [8].