The theory of 𝑄-rings

In this note we study a certain formal group law over a complete discrete valuation ring F [[ u n -1 ]] of characteristic p > 0 which is of height n over the closed point and of height n -1 over the generic point. By adjoining all coefficients of an isomorphism between the formal group law on the generic point and the Honda group law H n -1 of height n - 1, we get a Galois extension of the quotient field of the discrete valuation ring with Galois group isomorphic to the automorphism group S n -1 of H n -1 . We show that the automorphism group S n of the formal group over the closed point acts on the quotient field, lifting to an action on the Galois extension which commutes with the action of Galois group. We use this to construct a ring homomorphism from the cohomology of S n -1 to the cohomology of S n with coefficients in the quotient field. Applications of these results in stable homotopy theory and relation to the chromatic splitting conjecture are discussed.

Although the lifting of idempotents need not the completeness of O,from now on we assume that O is a complete discrete valuation ring with a residue field k of characteristic p. We need not assume that the field of quotients K of O has characteristic zero, allowing K = O = k.

Article On formal groups over complete discrete valuation rings with application to a theorem of Lutz. was published on January 1, 1982 in the journal Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik (volume 1982, issue 334).

Let A be a commutative integral domain with quotient field L, and let R be a subdomain of A with quotient field K. Assuming that L is a Galois extension of K, Nagata required the condition for R to be normal when A is called a Galois extension of R (see p. 31, M. Nagata, Local Rings (Wiley, New York, 1962)). However in this paper, A is considered in the case that R is not necessarily assumed to be normal. We introduce the notion of cyclic Galois extensions of integral domains and investigate several properties of such ring extensions. In particular, we completely determine the seminormalization [Formula: see text] of A in an overdomain B such that both A ⊆B are cyclic Galois extensions of R.

Let D be an integral domain with identity and let K denote the quotient field of D. If P is a prime ideal of D denote by $P[[X]]$ that prime ideal of $D[[X]]$ consisting of all those formal power series each of whose coefficients belongs to P. In this paper the following question is considered: When is ${(D[[X]])_{P[[X]]}}$ a valuation ring? Our main theorem states that if ${(D[[X]])_{P[[X]]}}$ is a valuation ring, then ${D_P}$ must be a rank one discrete valuation ring. Moreover, we show that if ${D_P}$ is a rank one discrete valuation ring and if $PD[[X]] = P[[X]]$, then ${(D[[X]])_{P[[X]]}}$ is a valuation ring. We also give an example to show that ${(D[[X]])_{P[[X]]}}$ need not be a valuation ring when ${D_P}$ is rank one discrete.

Let (R,m) be a complete discrete valuation ring with the finite residue field R∕m= Fq. Given a monic polynomial P(t)∈R[t] whose reduction modulo m gives an irreducible polynomial P‾(t)∈Fq[t], we initiate an investigation of the distribution of coker(P(A)), where A∈Matn(R) is randomly chosen with respect to the Haar probability measure on the additive group Matn(R) of n×n R-matrices. In particular, we provide a generalization of two results of Friedman and Washington about these random matrices. We use some concrete combinatorial connections between Matn(R) and Matn(Fq) to translate our problems about a Haar-random matrix in Matn(R) into problems about a random matrix in Matn(Fq) with respect to the uniform distribution. Our results over Fq are about the distribution of the P‾-part of a random matrix A‾∈Matn(Fq) with respect to the uniform distribution, and one of them generalizes a result of Fulman. We heuristically relate our results to a celebrated conjecture of Cohen and Lenstra, which predicts that given an odd prime p, any finite abelian p-group (i.e., Zp-module) H occurs as the p-part of the class group of a random imaginary quadratic field extension of Q with a probability inversely proportional to |AutZ(H)|. We review three different heuristics for the conjecture of Cohen and Lenstra, and they are all related to special cases of our main conjecture, which we prove as our main theorems.

Wild ramification and a vanishing cycles formula

David Rees completed his Cambridge undergraduate studies in mathematics in summer 1939; in his first three months of postgraduate work in autumn 1939, he produced a characterization of completely 0-simple semigroups. War then intervened: he worked until the end of the war at Bletchley Park, the British codebreaking centre in Buckinghamshire, where he was part of a team that broke the Enigma code regularly for some critical months during 1940. After the war, he first worked at Manchester University, but moved to Cambridge University in 1948. In the immediate post-war period, he continued with research into semigroups and non-commutative algebra. His first paper was very influential, and he is considered by semigroup theorists to be one of the founding fathers of their subject. At Cambridge, after attending a seminar by Douglas Northcott, Rees changed the focus of his research to commutative Noetherian rings. During an extraordinarily productive period between 1954 and 1961, he produced a string of far-reaching, foundational and deep ideas and results of lasting significance. Highlights include reductions of ideals, his Valuation Theorem, the theory of grade, the graded rings that are nowadays known as ‘Rees rings’, the Artin–Rees Lemma and his characterization of local rings whose completions have zero nilradical. Rees was appointed to the Chair of Pure Mathematics at the University of Exeter in 1958 and elected FRS in 1968. He was awarded the Polya Prize of the London Mathematical Society, and an Honorary DSc by the University of Exeter, in 1993. David Rees was born and brought up in Abergavenny; he was the fourth of five children of Gertrude (née Powell) and (another) David Rees, a corn merchant. The family lived above David's father's corn shop. There is history of both longevity and mathematical ability in David Rees's father's line: his father died at the age of 88, three of his siblings had 90th birthdays and one of his great-great-grandfathers was the Reverend Thomas Rees (1774–1858), a well-known non-conformist minister, who, according to one obituarist, was considered to be the best mathematician in Wales in 1802. David Rees was educated at King Henry VIII Grammar School in Abergavenny. At the time, the school had an excellent headmaster, Wyndham Newcombe, who was also a very good teacher of mathematics. Rees's early teenage years were affected by ill health, and he was absent from school for several terms. During those periods of illness, he studied at home independently, and his mother, armed with lists from the young David, became one of the best customers of the Abergavenny public library. This diligence stood him in good stead when he was able to return to normal schooling: under the guidance of mathematics master L. F. Porter, he was able to catch up quickly with his mathematics. He did rather well in School Certificate examinations in 1934 and 1936, and was awarded a State Scholarship and admission to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where his studies were supervised by Gordon Welchman. Rees started as a Commoner, but was made an Exhibitioner after one year and, after he had come top in the Preliminary Examination for Part II at the end of his second year, he was made a Scholar. Rees was persuaded to take Parts IIB and III together in 1939, and another candidate, Hermann Bondi, with whom he had a friendly rivalry and who only had to take Part IIB at that time, managed to just beat him into second place. Rees began postgraduate work in September 1939, without a proper supervisor, but inspired by ‘wonderful lectures’ by Philip Hall. In the autumn of 1939, he had a rather successful three months, during which he produced a characterization of completely 0-simple semigroups. Here are the relevant definitions. Let S be a semigroup, with operation written multiplicatively. A (two-sided) ideal of S is a non-empty subset A of S such that a s ∈ A and s a ∈ A for all a ∈ A and s ∈ S . A zero element of S is a (necessarily uniquely determined) element 0 ∈ S such that 0 s = 0 = s 0 for all s ∈ S . The semigroup S with zero is called 0-simple if { 0 } and S are its only ideals and there exist s , t ∈ S such that s t ≠ 0 . The semigroup S is said to be completely 0-simple if it is 0-simple and has a non-zero idempotent element e such that the only idempotent f ∈ S for which e f = f e = f ≠ 0 is e itself. Paper [1] was submitted in early May 1940, and represents a very successful start by Rees to postgraduate research. Given Rees's intensive work at Bletchley Park from December 1939 (see §3), most of the work for [1] must have been completed in Rees's first three months of research. In that paper, Rees does thank ‘Mr. P. Hall, both for his encouragement, while this paper was being written, and his very considerable assistance in preparing the paper for publication’. It should be noted that paper [1] is explicitly mentioned in the citation that accompanied David Rees's election as FRS. The phrases ‘Rees matrix semigroup’ and ‘Rees Theorem’ ensure that his name will live on among the semigroup community. By summer 1939, Gordon Welchman had been appointed to work at Bletchley Park, the British codebreaking centre in Buckinghamshire. In December 1939, Welchman knocked on the door of Rees's college rooms to tell him that he had a job for him to do. Rees naturally wanted to know details, but Welchman refused to elaborate, and only after prompting did he tell Rees to meet him a few days later at Bletchley railway station. Rees did so, and in this way was recruited to a team of codebreakers in Hut 6 at Bletchley Park. Welchman recruited several other young mathematicians he knew from Cambridge, including some he had taught at Sidney Sussex College. Even in later life after the veil of secrecy that covered the war-time exploits of Bletchley Park had been lifted, David Rees did not like to talk about his time there. However, it is now clear that he was part of a team that broke the Enigma code regularly for some critical months during the summer and autumn of 1940. The German operators of the Enigma machines were told which three of the five available rotors and which settings to use each day, but they had to choose the initial positions of the rotors and indicate their choices by means of the first three letters of their initial messages. John Herivel, who had also been recruited to Bletchley Park from Sidney Sussex College by Welchman, predicted in February 1940 that some German operators, when tired or stressed, might use short cuts that could be exploited by the Bletchley Park codebreakers. For three months, this lateral thinking by Herivel produced no result; but in May 1940 some of the German operators began to make the predicted mistakes, and David Rees and his fellow codebreakers were able to use the technique known as the ‘Herivel tip’ to break Enigma ciphers for some critical months from May 1940. Herivel has written an account 〈7〉 of the Herivel tip and related matters, in which he attributes the first successful use of the tip to David Rees: see 〈7, pp. 118–119〉. Interestingly, the same book contains a reproduction of a statement by David Rees about the Herivel tip in which he declared that he did not recollect being the person responsible for the first successful use of it, although he conceded that ‘it is possible that my memory is at fault’; see 〈7, p. 122〉. What is not in doubt is that the first successful use of the Herivel tip resulted in much rejoicing, shouting and standing on chairs. Rees thought very highly of Herivel's idea: he described it as ‘brilliant’ in the above-mentioned statement 〈7, p. 122〉; and he is quoted in 〈7, p. 11〉 as having said, in 2000, that ‘of course, the Herivel tip was one of the seminal discoveries of the Second World War’. Rees told the present author in 2007 that, in his opinion, Herivel did not receive the recognition that he deserved. In late 1941, David Rees was seconded to the Enigma Research Section at Bletchley Park, run by Dillwyn (‘Dilly’) Knox, and where the Abwehr Enigma used by the German Secret Service was broken. The so-called ‘Double Cross Committee’ used captured German agents to persuade Hitler that the D-Day landings would be south of Calais rather than in Normandy. It is said that, without the break into the Abwehr Enigma, British intelligence officers could not have known that the deception was working. David Rees subsequently moved to the ‘Newmanry’, the department at Bletchley Park led, for the second half of the war, by M. H. (Max) Newman, for which the first Colossus computer was constructed to assist with codebreaking. The list of subsequently famous mathematicians whom David Rees encountered during his service at Bletchley Park includes A. O. L. Atkin, I. J (Jack) Good, J. A. (Sandy) Green (who worked at Bletchley Park as a teenager), Peter Hilton, Max Newman, G. B. Preston and Shaun Wylie. Sandy Green and Peter Hilton were later to become coauthors of mathematical papers with David Rees, and Rees's third paper [3] (written after the war) was about a paper by Jack Good. There are now available in print numerous articles detailing aspects of the war-time exploits at Bletchley Park; two recent ones are The Guardian's obituary of Peter Hilton 〈23〉 and the Royal Society's Biographical Memoir about William Tutte 〈31〉. Following the end of the war, David Rees resumed his academic studies, and soon found himself working under Max Newman in a different context: he was appointed in 1945 to an Assistant Lectureship in the Department of Mathematics at Manchester University, and Newman was the head of that department. Rees remained at Manchester until 1948, when he was appointed to a University Lectureship at Cambridge; in 1949 he was appointed to a Fellowship at Downing College. He worked in semigroup theory and non-commutative algebra while at Manchester, and continued with these themes for his first years as a Cambridge don. He was very pleased with his joint paper [8] (with Sandy Green) from this time; in it they considered, for positive integers n and r with r ⩾ 2 , the semigroup S n , r (again written multiplicatively) generated by n elements in which each element x satisfies x r = x , but which is otherwise free, and they showed that the question as to whether S n , r is finite is intimately related to Burnside's Conjecture in group theory. Recall that the latter conjecture for r is the statement that, for all n > 0 , the group B n r generated by n elements in which each element x satisfies x r = e , but which is otherwise free, is finite. A striking result from the Green–Rees paper [8] is that the Burnside conjecture for r is true if and only if S n , r + 1 is finite for all n > 0 . David Rees wrote just five papers on semigroup theory, but their influence on the development of that subject has been very substantial. Interested readers might like to consult the tribute 〈11〉 to Rees in Semigroup Forum, where he is described as ‘one of the pioneers of semigroup theory’, as ‘one of the subject's founding fathers’, and as having ‘laid the foundations for a number of important avenues of future research’. However, as David Rees published about forty papers in commutative algebra, it is appropriate that the majority of this obituary be devoted to his contributions to that field. Another addition to the Mathematics faculty at Cambridge in 1948 was Douglas G. Northcott, who had spent 21 post-war months in Princeton, where he had been greatly stimulated by a seminar with the title ‘Valuation theory’ run by Emil Artin and Claude Chevalley, and by much informal guidance from Artin. Northcott returned to Cambridge having become a dedicated algebraist (his PhD work concerned a theory of integration for functions with values in a Banach space). In Princeton, Northcott had, at Artin's suggestion, studied the famous paper 〈28〉 by Weil, and, as a consequence, began to work in the algebra underlying what some refer to as the ‘pre-Grothendieck’ era of algebraic geometry. Thus Northcott became a commutative algebraist. Back in Cambridge, Northcott organized a very successful working seminar on Weil's book 〈29〉. David Rees was a member of the audience, and he was so inspired by the seminar that he too became a commutative algebraist. (Another aspect of Northcott's seminar that was life-changing for Rees was the presence in the audience of Joan Cushen: David and Joan were married in 1952.) David Rees's transition from semigroup theory was gradual and his first paper in commutative algebra ([9], written jointly with Northcott) only appeared in 1954. That paper is central to the next section. Paper [9], written jointly with Douglas Northcott, is, by a long way, David Rees's most-cited research paper: Mathematical Reviews records more than 200 citations of it. It introduced the notion of reductions of ideals. This concept and the related concept of integral closure have had a major influence on research in commutative algebra in the more than 60 years since they were introduced; indeed, even in the present century, hardly a top-level international conference in commutative algebra passes without there being several mentions of reductions. Let b and a be proper ideals of R. The ideal b is said to be a reduction of a if b ⊆ a and there exists s ∈ N 0 (the set of non-negative integers) such that b a s = a s + 1 . One can view such a b as an approximation to a that nevertheless retains some of the properties of a: for example, a prime ideal p of R is a minimal prime ideal of b if and only if it is a minimal prime ideal of a, and when that is the case, the multiplicity of b corresponding to p is equal to the multiplicity of a corresponding to p. (The multiplicity of a corresponding to its minimal prime ideal p is the multiplicity e ( a R p of the ideal a R p of the R p The for the of reduction to David Rees while he was thinking about so-called ideals in a graded S = n ∈ N 0 S n that is as an algebra S 0 , by elements of S + = n ∈ N S n N the set of positive A = n ∈ N A n be a graded ideal of R generated by elements of Rees noted that A n = S n for all n is, A is if and only if there exists ∈ N 0 such that A ( S + = ( S + + 1 . This to the of the concept of The between reductions and integral can be as Let b ⊆ a be ideals of R. b is a reduction of a if and only if each element of a is on the set J of all ideals of R that have b as a reduction has a b b is the of the of and this ideal b is the set of all elements of R that are on The ideal b is called the integral closure of it has the that the ideals of R that have b as a reduction are those between b and b . that b is if b = b . The ideal b is said to be a minimal reduction of a if b is a reduction of a and there is no reduction of a with b (the of is written under the that R is a local with and so that will be in until also will the ideal of Rees and Northcott the ( a of this to be equal to the of ( a ( a , where ( a the graded ∈ N 0 a a + 1 of that reduction of a at ( a that a reduction of a is a minimal reduction of a if and only if it can be generated by ( a and that each reduction of a contains a minimal reduction of Thus all minimal of all minimal reductions of a have ( a on to that ( a can be as 1 , , t ∈ a are said to be in a ∈ N and f ∈ R 1 , , t (the of R in t is a of such that f ( 1 , , t ∈ a , then all the of f in if b is a reduction of a, ( b b = t and { 1 , , t } is a minimal set for it that b is a minimal reduction of a if and only if 1 , , t are in ( a is equal to the number of elements of a that are in a, and a ( a ( a a . mentioned the in the of the of reduction and integral closure in the 60 years since Rees and Northcott published are very and related have been studied in The can some of the influence that these ideas of Rees and Northcott have had, and to in commutative algebra by the book by and on integral That book is dedicated to and David a of and about of Rees's contributions to commutative algebra. In this in which to of the commutative Noetherian some graded rings used by Rees to good these rings are to as ‘Rees and Rees A between graded rings is an that There is an between R a and R ( a . that the graded R ( a a R ( a is to the graded ( a = ∈ N 0 a a + 1 of The R ( a is also called the up of this has its in the that the of R ( a is the underlying the by up ( R with to The of R a , 1 is and Rees used to very good the that, for an ∈ N 0 , the of the graded ideal R a , 1 of R a , 1 is just a . In other R a , 1 R = a . By means of this Rees was able to some about of an ideal in a Noetherian to the where the ideal is and generated by a In that case, are The of Theorem, on the in Rees his use of the above that R is r ∈ = 1 a , then there exists a ∈ a such that r = a r . first with the where a is the ideal R generated by a r ∈ = 1 a , for each ∈ N , r = s for some s ∈ R . s = s + 1 for all ∈ N , since is a in R. R s 1 ⊆ R s 2 ⊆ ⊆ R s ⊆ , and so there exists ∈ N such that R s = R s + 1 . Thus s + 1 = s b for some b ∈ R , from which see that s = s + 1 = s ( b , with b ∈ R . r = s = ( b s = ( b r . In the case, the Rees S = R a , 1 , and set = 1 , a of that Let r ∈ = 1 a . r ∈ = 1 S , and, by the first of this can r = f r for some f ∈ S . f = = b , where b ∈ a for all = , , . of 0 to see that r = b 1 r , and that b 1 ∈ a . In the same paper Rees also a of what is now known as Artin–Rees That also the Rees Lemma (The Artin–Rees Lemma Lemma that R is Let a , b be two ideals of R. there exists ∈ N such that a n b = a n ( a b for all n ⩾ . S = R a , 1 , the Rees of a, and B = b R , 1 S , an ideal of Thus an element = r of R , 1 to B if and only if r ∈ a b for all = , , . B is a graded ideal of the Noetherian and so has a finite set of { b 1 1 , , b } where b ∈ a b for all = 1 , , . Let = { 1 , , } . a n b = a n ( a b for all n ⩾ . (The might it to that ( a b a n ⊆ ( a + 1 b a n ( + 1 for integers n , with 0 n David Rees the name of the as David had his of the in but he did not it for until May paper appeared in in the very in which Emil Artin at a conference in about his of the same and result; M. was to as to who should receive the and that ‘it is the Artin–Rees There is a of the for which that if N is a of a generated then there exists ∈ N such that a n N = a n ( a N for all n ⩾ . This result means that the on N by the on is the on The might like to consult well as being well to the of of a ideal a of the Rees R a , 1 can be used to the integral of the of a, it that R a , 1 R = a for each ∈ N 0 = 1 However, Rees's Valuation Theorem, which is the subject of the next also about the integral of of In a of papers published during an productive period from to David Rees what he called his ‘Valuation which can be as the integral of the of an ideal a of R in of uniquely rings are nowadays to as Rees rings’, while the are called Rees related to the Rees is the as a be a proper ideal of the R. The of a is the a R N 0 { } for which Lemma and Lemma the of for each r ∈ R , the The name is in recognition of P. of the of the theory of ideals in work had a influence on The of the and the of integral closure can be in to the where the underlying A is not and the of Lemma see for a ∈ N 0 , an ideal of A and a , a ∈ A , one can that, if a ∈ , then ( a ⩾ , while if ( a > , then a ∈ . For the statement of Rees's Valuation Theorem, the concept of of including in the where R is not a For properties of and the the is to a of the of the R R p for some minimal prime ideal p of R and a of the of R p that is non-negative on R p . the values of and in { } that, for an r ∈ R , have ( r = if and only if r ∈ p . Valuation that R is Let a be a proper ideal of R. there exist 1 , , of R the of and positive integers e 1 , , e , such that the Rees come in an that their are that, in a ideal is and the Theorem, the statement of which the concept of is an integral such that for each prime ideal p of of the p is a = p ∈ ( , p = 1 p each non-zero a ∈ to only of the prime ideals of of (The that R is that R is an integral its integral closure R is a This result is to in the where R is local and to M. in the that R not be In the about the can be used to Rees's Valuation Theorem, will be on the where R is a in that it is to see where the Rees come A in the of the Valuation from a Noetherian to a commutative Noetherian R is the that, for an ideal a of R and r ∈ R , have r ∈ a if and only if r + p ∈ a + p p for each minimal prime ideal p of R. a of Lemma is related to the integral of of have noted in the that if r ∈ a for a ∈ N , then a ( r ⩾ the Valuation can be used to the statement in Noetherian R. for ∈ N and r ∈ R , it is the that r ∈ a if and only if a ( r ⩾ . This of the Valuation is in such as to about whether two ideals a , b of R are that is, such that a s = b t for some s , t ∈ N . Rees thought that was his best paper, but another of which he was and in which also was In that, he a that had been by in and was related to The latter can be as if S the of in n a and if is a of the of of S that contains must the S be generated In the if is a generated of a and S is a generated integral whose of contains must the S be generated himself in that if the of is 1 or then S is generated In Rees constructed an that showed that the to is For he used and very an Rees the of a of the ideal a on was by in The concept of grade, to the theory of is also to David 1 , , t in R are said to a if they a proper ideal and ( ( 1 , , 1 = ( 1 , , 1 for all = 1 , t . (The of this when = 1 is as ( 0 1 = 0 , that is, 1 is a on In Rees that, for a proper ideal a of each in a has equal to the such that R ( R a , R ≠ 0 . all in a have the same and Rees this to be the of His him to quickly that

Let R be a 2-dimensional normal excellent henselian local domain in which 2 is invertible and let L and k be its fraction field and residue field respectively. Let Ω R be the set of rank 1 discrete valuations of L corresponding to codimension 1 points of regular proper models of Spec R . We prove that a quadratic form q over L satisfies the local-global principle with respect to Ω R in the following two cases: (1) q has rank 3 or 4; (2) q has rank ≥ 5 and R = A [ [ y ] ] , where A is a complete discrete valuation ring with a not too restrictive condition on the residue field k , which is satisfied when k is C 1 .

An integral domain R is said to be weakly factorial if every nonunit of R is a product of primary elements.We give several conditions equivalent to R being weakly factorial.For example, we show that the following conditions are equivalent: (1) R is weakly factorial; (2) every convex directed subgroup of the group of divisibility of R is a cardinal summand; (3) if P is a prime ideal of R minimal over a proper principal ideal (x), then P has height one and (x)p n R is principal; (4) R = C\Rp , where the intersection runs over the height-one primes of R , is locally finite, and the i-class group of R is trivial.Throughout this note, R will be a commutative integral domain with identity having quotient field K. Suppose that R is a UFD.If S is a saturated multiplicatively closed subset of R, then S = {Xpx -pn\X a unit of R, n > 0, each (p) Y} for some subset Y X{X), where X{X) is the set of height-one prime ideals of R .Conversely, every such subset Y X{X) determines a saturated multiplicatively closed subset of R. If we set T = {Xpx -p"\X a unit of R , n > 0, each (p() G X(1) -Y}, then every nonzero element r of ii may be written uniquely up to units in the form r = st where s e S and t T. Stated in terms of the group of divisibility G(R) of R, (S) is a cardinal summand of G(R).In fact, (S) c (T) -G(R).(See the next paragraph for definitions.)Here G(R) is a cardinal sum of copies of Z, one for each height-one prime, and (S) is the sum of the cyclic summands corresponding to the primes from Y .The purpose of this paper is to characterize the integral domains with this property.We show that an integral domain R has the property that every convex directed subgroup of G(R) is a cardinal summand of G(R) if and only if every nonunit of R is a product of primary elements, that is, R is weakly factorial.Let R be an integral domain with quotient field K.The group of divisibility of R is the group G(R) = K*/U(R), where K* is the multiplicative group of K and U(R) is the group units of R. G(R) is partially ordered

Morita Equivalence for Blocks of the Schur Algebras

Introduction. In [7] and [8] we have determined the isomorphisms of the endomorphism rings of two special classes of torsion-free modules. In [7] the modules were free, over principal left ideal domains, and the isomorpnism was always induced by a semi-linear transformation of the modules. In [8] the ring of scalars was a complete discrete valuation ring, but no further restriction was placed on the modules. Except for the special case when both modules are divisible, the same result holds as in [7]. In each case a key point in the argument is that a certain indecomposable direct summand can be shown to be cyclic. Even for ordinary torsion-free abelian groups, the abundance of the indecomposable ones makes it impossible to prove that isomorphism of the endomorphism rings implies isomorphism of the underlying groups. We show first that for any cardinal number c, there exist homogeneous completely decomposable groups G and H of rank c which are not isomorphic, but have isomorphic rings of endomorphisms. This makes it clear that strong restrictions must be placed on the class of groups considered if it is hoped that the ring isomorphism is to be induced by a group isomorphism. In particular, homogeneity coupled with separability or complete decomposability is not sufficient. We are, however, able to generalize the results of [7] to a class of what we call locally free modules A over principal left ideal domains F. A locally free abelian group (F is the ring of integers) is just a homogeneous separable group of null type [6, p. 208]. This latter class of groups includes the complete direct sum of infinite cyclic groups, as well as all its subgroups [4, p. 176]. For example, the set of all bounded sequences of integers is such a group. We also determine (Theorem B) which semi-linear transformations induce the same ring isomorphisms. The results are similar to the vector space case considered in [2], and apply to the endomorphism rings of locally free modules as well as the torsion-free modules of [8].

Representation types of group rings over complete discrete valuation rings

We apply the G-algebra theory to the tensor product of algebras. These considerations are applied to extend the results of Alghamdi and Khammash [1], Khammash [4] and Külshammer [5, Proposition 1.2] on the tensor product of group algebras and modules over an algebraically closed field to lattices over a complete discrete valuation ring. This places these results in the standard integral finite group modular representation theory of G-algebras as pioneered by Puig (cf. [8]). We also study some aspects of covering homomorphisms and the Green correspondence in this context (cf. [8, Sections 20 and 25]).

A characterization of blocks with vertices