Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2010
Throughout this paper a ring will mean a commutative ring with identity element. If A is an ideal of the ring R and P is a minimal prime ideal of A, then the intersection Q of all P-primary ideals which contain A is called the isolated primary component of A belonging to P. The ideal Q can also be described as the set of all elements x∈R such that xr∈A for some r∈R\P. If {Pα} is the collection of all minimal prime ideals of A and Qα is the isolated primary component of A belonging to Pα, then is called the kernel of A.