Rings characterized by their right ideals or cyclic modules

Abstract

It is well known that a ring R is semiprime Artinian if and only if every right ideal is an injective right R-module. In this paper we shall be concerned with the following general question: given a ring R all of whose right ideals have a certain property, what implications does this have for the ring R itself? In practice, it is not necessary to insist that all right ideals have the property, usually the maximal or essential right ideals will suffice. On the other hand, Osofsky proved that a ring R is semiprime Artinian if and only if every cyclic right R-module is injective. This leads to the second general question: given a ring R all of whose cyclic right R-modules have a certain property, what can one say about R itself?