Several Characterizations of Left K\"othe Rings

Abstract

We study the classical K\"othe's problem, concerning the structure of non-commutative rings with the property that: ``every left module is a direct sum of cyclic modules". In 1934, K\"othe showed that left modules over Artinian principal ideal rings are direct sums of cyclic modules. A ring $R$ is called a ${\it left~K\"othe~ring}$ if every left $R$-module is a direct sum of cyclic $R$-modules. In 1951, Cohen and Kaplansky proved that all commutative K{\"o}the rings are Artinian principal ideal rings. During the years 1962 to 1965, Kawada solved the K\"othe's problem for basic fnite-dimensional algebras: Kawada's theorem characterizes completely those finite-dimensional algebras for which any indecomposable module has square-free socle and square-free top, and describes the possible indecomposable modules. But, so far, the K\"othe's problem is open in the non-commutative setting. In this paper, we break the class of left K{\"o}the rings into three categories of nested: ${\it left~K\"othe~rings}$, ${\it strongly~left~K{\"o}the~rings}$ and ${\it very~strongly~left~K{\"o}the~rings}$, and then, we solve the K\"othe's problem by giving several characterizations of these rings in terms of describing the indecomposable modules. Finally, we give a new generalization of K\"othe-Cohen-Kaplansky theorem.