Rigid Rings and Makar-Limanov Techniques

A ring is rigid if it admits no nonzero locally nilpotent derivation. Although a “generic” ring should be rigid, it is not trivial to show that a ring is rigid. We provide several examples of rigid rings and we outline two general strategies to help determine if a ring is rigid, which we call “parametrization techniques.” and “filtration techniques.” We provide many tools and lemmas which may be useful in other situations. Also, we point out some pitfalls to beware when using these techniques. Finally, we give some reasonably simple rings for which the question of rigidity remains unsettled.