Direct product of division rings and a paper of Abian

It is shown that the rings under the title admit an order-theoretical characterization as in the commutative case studied by Abian. Introduction. Let R be an associative ring equipped with the binary relation (^) defined by xay if and only if xy = x2 in R. In this paper, it is shown that ( ^ ) is an order relation on R if and only if, R has no nilpotent elements i9*0). Conditions on the binary relation (g) in order that R split into a direct product of division rings are then studied in the light of Abian's result (l, Theorem l). Using similar argumentation and using certain subdirect representation of rings with no nilpotent elements, one obtains a complete similarity with the commutative case (yet, no extra complication in the computa- tions). Conventions. R is an associative ring which is, unless otherwise stated, with no nilpotent elements (other than 0). As a result of (2), R can be embedded into a direct product of skewdomains, R—* YLiei £i (that is to say, rings R, having no one-sided divisors of zero). The former embedding is fixed throughout the paper. It is therefore legiti- mate to identify any element x in R with the family consisting of all its projections (xj.e/. Finally, all definitions in (l) are extended (verbatim) to the present case (of a noncommutative ring R) and are freely used throughout.