How is invertibility defined for square matrices over non-commutative rings?

128 Views Asked by At

In this article Wikipedia defines invertibility for square matrices over commutative rings as follows:

...in the case of the ring being commutative, the condition for a square matrix to be invertible is that its determinant is invertible in the ring

But for non-commutative rings, it does not offer a definition:

For a noncommutative ring, the usual determinant is not defined. The conditions for existence of left-inverse or right-inverse are more complicated, since a notion of rank does not exist over rings.

I was wondering what that definition is. Can anyone help me find it?

1

There are 1 best solutions below

0
On BEST ANSWER

It seems like they (justly) don't define invertible matrices by the determinant, but instead by the relation $AB = BA = I$, which is the good notion of invertibility when looking at matrices as a ring.
That is, the condition with the determinant shouldn't be seen as a definition but as a theorem/proposition.