The Minimal Prime Spectrum of a Commutative Ring

Abstract

We call a topological space X minspectral if it is homeomorphic to the space of minimal prime ideals of a commutative ring A in the usual (hull-kernel or Zariski) topology (see [2, p. 111]). Note that if A has an identity, is a subspace of Spec A (as defined in [1, p. 124]). It is well known that a minspectral space is Hausdorff and has a clopen basis (and hence is completely regular). We give here a topological characterization of the minspectral spaces, and we show that all minspectral spaces can actually be obtained from rings with identity and that open (but not closed) subspaces of minspectral spaces are minspectral (Theorem 1, Proposition 5).