Derivations with Invertible Values

Abstract

In this paper we study a question which, although somewhat special, has the virtue that its answer can be given in a very precise, definitive, and succinct way. It shows that the structure of a ring is very tightly determined by the imposition of a special behavior on one of its derivations.The problem which we shall examine is: Suppose that R is a ring with unit element, 1, and that d ≠ 0 is a derivation of R such that for every x ∊ R, d(x) = 0 or d(x) is invertible in R; must R then have a very special structure?As we shall see, the answer to this question is yes, in particular we show that except for a special case which occurs when 2R = 0, R must be a division ring D or the ring D2 of 2 × 2 matrices over a division ring.