A note on semiprime Malcev superalgebras

Abstract

SynopsisPrime Malcev superalgebras over fields of characteristic not two and three have been studied by Shestakov [8]. He obtains the remarkable result that if these superalgebras have a nonzero odd part then they are Lie superalgebras. The main purpose of this note is to extend this result to fields of characteristic three. To this aim, it is enough to use adequately a result of Filippov [3]. Commutative and anticommutative superalgebras will be considered too, showing that they are prime, semiprime or simple as superalgebras if and only if they are as algebras. Finally, some conclusions for finite-dimensional semisimple Malcev superalgebras will be deduced. Any such superalgebra is the direct sum of a semisimple Lie superalgebra and a direct sum of simple non-Lie algebras.