Prove that (2,x) is not a principal ideal of Z[x]

Prove that (2,x)(2,x) is not a principal ideal of Z[x]\mathbb{Z}[x]

Proof. Assume by contradiction that (2,x)(2,x) is a principal ideal. Then (2,x)=(f(x))(2,x) = (f(x)), where f(x)Z[x]f(x) \in \mathbb{Z}[x]. Say we have 2(f(x))2 \in (f(x)). Then by the definition of an ideal, we have that 2=f(x)g(x)2 = f(x)g(x) for some g(x)Z[x]g(x) \in \mathbb{Z}[x]. By some basic calculus and that Z[x]\mathbb{Z}[x] is an integral domain, we have that deg(f(x)g(x))=deg(f(x))+deg(g(x))deg(f(x)g(x)) = deg(f(x)) + deg(g(x)). So we know 2=f(x)g(x)2 = f(x)g(x) possible if both f(x)f(x) and g(x)g(x) are constants. This implies that f(x),g(x){±1,±2}f(x),g(x) \in \{\pm 1, \pm 2\}. We see the two different situations:

  1. Assume that f(x)=±1f(x) = \pm 1. Then this implies that (f(x))=Z[x](f(x)) = \mathbb{Z}[x], which is not a proper ideal.
  2. Assume that f(x)=±2f(x) = \pm 2. Then we have that if x(f(x))x \in (f(x)), then x=2g(x)x = 2\cdot g(x). This implies that g(x)=12xg(x) = \frac{1}{2}x, which is impossible since g(x){±1,±2}g(x) \in \{\pm 1, \pm 2\} and secondly 12∉Z\frac{1}{2} \not \in \mathbb{Z}.

So (2,x)(2,x) is not a principal ideal of Z[x]\mathbb{Z}[x], which completes the proof.

Note that with the proof above, we also proved that Z[x]\mathbb{Z}[x] is not a PID.

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