Nilpotency of derivations. II

Source abstract

The authors recently proved that for a semiprime ring without 2 2 -torsion, a nilpotent derivation must have odd nilpotency. In this paper, we show the intriguing phenomenon that for a semiprime ring with characteristic 2, the nilpotency of a nilpotent derivation must be of the form 2 n {2^n} . Combining these two results, we show that for a general semiprime ring with no torsion condition, the nilpotency of a nilpotent derivation is either odd or a power of 2.