A special atom (respectively, supernilpotent atom) is a minimal element of the lattice $\mathbb{S}$ of all special radicals (respectively, a minimal element of the lattice $\mathbb{K}$ of all supernilpotent radicals). A semiprime ring $R$ is called prime essential if every nonzero prime ideal of $R$ has a nonzero intersection with each nonzero two-sided ideal of $R$ . We construct a prime essential ring $R$ such that the smallest supernilpotent radical containing $R$ is not a supernilpotent atom but where the smallest special radical containing $R$ is a special atom. This answers a question put by Puczylowski and Roszkowska.

A semiprime ring $R$ is called a $\ast$-ring if the factor ring $R/I$ is in the prime radical for every nonzero ideal $I$ of $R$. A long-standing open question posed by Gardner asks whether the prime radical coincides with the upper radical $U(\ast _{k})$ generated by the essential cover of the class of all $\ast$-rings. This question is related to many other open questions in radical theory which makes studying properties of $U(\ast _{k})$ worthwhile. We show that $U(\ast _{k})$ is an N-radical and that it coincides with the prime radical if and only if it is complemented in the lattice $\mathbb{L}_{N}$ of all N-radicals. Along the way, we show how to establish left hereditariness and left strongness of important upper radicals and give a complete description of all the complemented elements in $\mathbb{L}_{N}$.

A supernilpotent radical α is called bad if the class π(α) of all prime and α-semisimple rings consists of the one-element ring 0 only. We construct infinitely many bad supernilpotent radicals which form a generalization of Ryabukhin’s example of a supernilpotent nonspecial radical. We show that the family of all bad supernilpotent radicals is a sublattice of the lattice of all supernilpotent radicals and give examples of supernilpotent radicals that are not bad.

A radical α has the Amitsur property if α(A[x])=(α(A[x])∩A)[x] for all rings A. For rings R⊆S with the same unity, we call S a finite centralizing extension of R if there exist b1,b2,…,bt∈S such that S=b1R+b2R+⋯+btR and bir=rbi for all r∈R and i=1,2,…,t. A radical α is FCE-friendly if α(S)∩R⊆α(R) for any finite centralizing extension S of a ring R. We show that if α is a supernilpotent radical whose semisimple class contains the ring ℤ of all integers and α is FCE-friendly, then α has the Amitsur property. In this way the Amitsur property of many well-known radicals such as the prime radical, the Jacobson radical, the Brown–McCoy radical, the antisimple radical and the Behrens radical can be established. Moreover, applying this condition, we will show that the upper radical 𝒰(*k) generated by the essential cover *k of the class * of all *-rings has the Amitsur property and 𝒰(*k)(A[x])=𝒰(*k)(A)[x], where a semiprime ring R is called a *-ring if the factor ring R/I is prime radical for every nonzero ideal I of R. The importance of *-rings stems from the fact that a *-ring A is Jacobson semisimple if and only if A is a primitive ring.

It is shown that the topologically irreducible representations of a normed algebra define a certain topological radical in the same way that the strictly irreducible representations define the Jacobson radical and that this radical can be strictly smaller than the Jacobson radical. An abstract theory of ‘topological radicals’ in topological algebras is developed and used to relate this radical to the Baer radical (prime radical). The relations with topologically transitive representations and standard representations in the sense of Meyer are also explored.

1991 Mathematics Subject Classification: 46H15, 46H25, 16Nxx.