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The Rabinowitch trick (in Eisenbud's Commutative Algebra with a view toward Algebraic Geometry, page 132) says that $R$ (commutative unital ring) is Jacobson if and only if for every prime ideal $P \subset R$, if $(R/P)[b^{-1}]$ is a field, then $R/P$ is a field. Equivalently, each quotient domain $S = R/P$ has the property:

(*): $S$ is a field or the intersection of its nonzero primes is $(0)$.

Does this property (*) have a name?

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An integral domain $R$ for which the intersection of the nonzero prime ideals is nonzero is a Goldman domain. Equivalently: the fraction field $K$ is finitely generated as an $R$-algebra (equivalently, $K = R[f]$ for some $f \in K$). The latter property is usually taken as the definition, but the equivalence is almost immediate: see e.g. $\S 12.1$ of these notes. Note also that the prominence of Goldman domains in commutative algebra is due as much to Kaplansky as to Oscar Goldman: under the name "G-domain", they play a surprisingly central role in his (perhaps slightly eccentric but very) influential text Commutative Rings.

For a general ring I don't quite know the answer to your question, but in his 1966 paper The pseudo-radical of a commutative ring, Robert Gilmer defines in any commutative ring the pseudo-radical to be the intersection of all nonzero prime ideals. You can try to chase this down in the literature and see what you come up with.

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  • $\begingroup$ Lemma 12.2 also shows up in Hungerford's Algebra (Exercise VIII.5.4). $\endgroup$
    – bfhaha
    Feb 8, 2019 at 17:40

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