There is an increasing body of evidence that prime near-rings with derivations have ring like behavior, indeed, there are several results (see for example [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] and [8]) asserting that the existence of a suitably-constrained derivation on a prime near-ring forces the near-ring to be a ring. It is our purpose to explore further this ring like behaviour. In this paper we generalize some of the results due to Bell and Mason [4] on near-rings admitting a special type of derivation...

Let $ℛ$ be a semiprime ring with unity $e$ and $\phi$, $\varphi$ be automorphisms of $ℛ$. In this paper it is shown that if $ℛ$ satisfies $$2𝒟\left(x^n\right)=𝒟\left(x^{n-1}\right)\phi \left(x\right)+\varphi \left(x^{n-1}\right)𝒟\left(x\right)+𝒟\left(x\right)\phi \left(x^{n-1}\right)+\varphi \left(x\right)𝒟\left(x^{n-1}\right)$$ for all $x\in ℛ$ and some fixed integer $n\ge 2$, then $𝒟$ is an ($\phi$, $\varphi$)-derivation. Moreover, this result makes it possible to prove that if $ℛ$ admits an additive mappings $𝒟,𝒢:ℛ\to ℛ$ satisfying the relations $$\begin{array}{c}2𝒟\left(x^n\right)=𝒟\left(x^{n-1}\right)\phi \left(x\right)+\varphi \left(x^{n-1}\right)𝒢\left(x\right)+𝒢\left(x\right)\phi \left(x^{n-1}\right)+\varphi \left(x\right)𝒢\left(x^{n-1}\right),\\ 2𝒢\left(x^n\right)=𝒢\left(x^{n-1}\right)\phi \left(x\right)+\varphi \left(x^{n-1}\right)𝒟\left(x\right)+𝒟\left(x\right)\phi \left(x^{n-1}\right)+\varphi \left(x\right)𝒟\left(x^{n-1}\right),\end{array}$$ for all $x\in ℛ$ and some fixed integer $n\ge 2$, then $𝒟$ and $𝒢$ are ($\phi$, $\varphi$)derivations under some torsion restriction. Finally, we apply these purely ring theoretic results to semi-simple Banach algebras.

2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: 13N15, 13A50, 16W25.We reduce the Nowicki conjecture on Weitzenböck derivations of polynomial algebras to a well known problem of classical invariant theory.

Let $R$ be a prime ring of characteristic different from $2$, $U$ the Utumi quotient ring of $R$, $C=Z\left(U\right)$ the extended centroid of $R$, $L$ a non-central Lie ideal of $R$, $F$ a non-zero generalized derivation of $R$. Suppose that $\left[F\right(u),u]F\left(u\right)=0$ for all $u\in L$, then one of the following holds: (1) there exists $\alpha \in C$ such that $F\left(x\right)=\alpha x$ for all $x\in R$; (2) $R$ satisfies the standard identity $s_4$ and there exist $a\in U$ and $\alpha \in C$ such that $F\left(x\right)=ax+xa+\alpha x$ for all $x\in R$. We also extend the result to the one-sided case. Finally, as an application we obtain some range inclusion results of...

Let $R$ be a prime ring of characteristic different from 2 and 3, $Q_r$ its right Martindale quotient ring, $C$ its extended centroid, $L$ a non-central Lie ideal of $R$ and $n\ge 1$ a fixed positive integer. Let $\alpha$ be an automorphism of the ring $R$. An additive map $D:R\to R$ is called an $\alpha$-derivation (or a skew derivation) on $R$ if $D\left(xy\right)=D\left(x\right)y+\alpha \left(x\right)D\left(y\right)$ for all $x,y\in R$. An additive mapping $F:R\to R$ is called a generalized $\alpha$-derivation (or a generalized skew derivation) on $R$ if there exists a skew derivation $D$ on $R$ such that $F\left(xy\right)=F\left(x\right)y+\alpha \left(x\right)D\left(y\right)$ for all $x,y\in R$. We prove that, if $F$...

Let $R$ be a noncommutative prime ring of characteristic different from 2, with its two-sided Martindale quotient ring $Q$, $C$ the extended centroid of $R$ and $a\in R$. Suppose that $\delta$ is a nonzero $\sigma$-derivation of $R$ such that $a{[\delta \left(x^n\right),x^n]}_k=0$ for all $x\in R$, where $\sigma$ is an automorphism of $R$, $n$ and $k$ are fixed positive integers. Then $a=0$.

The problem of when derivations (and their powers) have the range in the Jacobson radical is considered. The proofs are based on the density theorem for derivations.