Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2009
Let R be a noetherian prime PI ring and let P be a prime ideal of R. There is a set of prime ideals, the fundamental prime ideals, associated with the injective hull of R/P and denoted by Fund(P). The set Fund(P) is finite, by a result of Miiller. In this paper we give a natural description of Fund(P) in terms of the trace ring of R which strengthens Miiller's result by establishing a uniform bound for the size of Fund(P) for all primes P in the ring.