title: Semiprimitive ring
text: # Semiprimitive ring
  
  In algebra, a semiprimitive ring or Jacobson semisimple ring or J-semisimple ring is a ring whose Jacobson radical is zero. This is a type of ring more general than a semisimple ring, but where simple modules still provide enough information about the ring. Rings such as the ring of integers are semiprimitive, and an artinian semiprimitive ring is just a semisimple ring. Semiprimitive rings can be understood as subdirect products of primitive rings, which are described by the Jacobson density theorem.
  
  ## Definition
  
  A ring is called semiprimitive or Jacobson semisimple if its Jacobson radical is the zero ideal.
  
  A ring is semiprimitive if and only if it has a faithful semisimple left module. The semiprimitive property is left-right symmetric, and so a ring is semiprimitive if and only if it has a faithful semisimple right module.
  
  A ring is semiprimitive if and only if it is a subdirect product of left primitive rings.
  
  A commutative ring is semiprimitive if and only if it is a subdirect product of fields, (Lam 1995, p. 137).
  
  A left artinian ring is semiprimitive if and only if it is semisimple, (Lam 2001, p. 54). Such rings are sometimes called semisimple Artinian, (Kelarev 2002, p. 13).
  
  ## Examples
  
  * The ring of integers is semiprimitive, but not semisimple.
  * Every primitive ring is semiprimitive.
  * The product of two fields is semiprimitive but not primitive.
  * Every von Neumann regular ring is semiprimitive.
  
  Jacobson himself has defined a ring to be "semisimple" if and only if it is a subdirect product of simple rings, (Jacobson 1989, p. 203). However, this is a stricter notion, since the endomorphism ring of a countably infinite dimensional vector space is semiprimitive, but not a subdirect product of simple rings, (Lam 1995, p. 42).
  
  