Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
Many authors have considered the radicals of semigroup rings of commutative semigroups. A list of the papers pertaining to this field is contained in [4]. In [1] Amitsur proved that, for any associative ring R and for every free commutative semigroup S, the equalities B(RS) = B(R)S and L(RS) = L(R)S hold, where B is the Baer radical and L is the Levitsky radical. A natural problem which arises is to describe semigroup rings RS such that π(RS) = π(R)S, where π is one of the most important radicals. For the Baer and Levitsky radicals and commutative semigroups a complete solution of the above problem follows from theorems 2·8 and 3·1 of [15].