A note on a pair of derivations of semiprime rings

Abstract

We study certain properties of derivations on semiprime rings. The main purpose is to prove the following result: let R be a semiprime ring with center Z(R), and let f, g be derivations of R such that f(x)x+xg(x)∈Z(R) for all x∈R, then f and g are central. As an application, we show that noncommutative semisimple Banach algebras do not admit nonzero linear derivations satisfying the above central property. We also show that every skew-centralizing derivation f of a semiprime ring R is skew-commuting.