Brauer group 2026-09-28
The Brauer group of a field consists of Morita equivalence classes of central simple -algebras. Multiplication is induced by tensor product, the identity is , and the inverse of is the class of the opposite algebra .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 iii Paper 5 5 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Choose a maximal Brauer pair for . Define its inertial quotient of a block and inertial index of a block byConjugacy of maximal pairs makes the index well-defined. The standard maximal-pair property used here is that is a -group. Since is cyclic, its faithful conjugation action embeds it into , so . Write and .
We use two precise structural results. Over an algebraically closed field, the basic algebra of a block with cyclic defect group is a Brauer tree algebra with edges and exceptional multiplicity . For a Brauer tree algebra with edges and exceptional multiplicity , all nonprojective indecomposable modules form the stable Auslander–Reiten quiverThese are the cyclic-defect structure theorem and the stable-quiver classification for tree algebras; we are not taking the requested numerical count as an assumption. Morita equivalence preserves simple, projective and indecomposable isomorphism classes.
There is one simple module per edge, so . The vertices of can be indexed by , , . The quotient by leaves choices of for each . With , there are nonprojective indecomposable modules. There are also indecomposable projective modules, one projective cover per simple. ThereforeThis counts isomorphism classes, not multiplicities in the regular module. In the one-edge case it agrees with the Jordan chains for .
For the definition, take a finite connected tree with a cyclic order of the incident edges at every vertex and positive integer multiplicities equal to one except possibly at a distinguished vertex. Its Brauer tree path presentation has a quiver vertex for each tree edge, and successor arrows around each tree vertex, including loops for valency one. If edge has endpoints , let and be the cycles around these endpoints. The relations identifykill , and kill paths switching between successor cycles belonging to different tree vertices. Redundant valency-one loops may be eliminated. This quotient of the path algebra is the basic Brauer tree algebra; allowing an arbitrary algebra with Morita equivalence to it does not change the module assertions. In particular, the cyclic orders and multiplicity, not merely the underlying graph, are part of the data.
For the construction, use right modules with paths multiplied left to right; equivalently use the opposite quiver for left modules, choosing orientation so radical factors follow the specified order. The indecomposable projective with top has simple socle and two uniserial radical branches meeting in that socle. The relations show that has length and factors repeated times. The other branch has length . Thus is a uniserial module of length , with factors cyclically repeated. For the Jacobson radical,is the desired uniserial branch of a Brauer tree algebra. If an endpoint is a nonexceptional leaf, its branch is just the socle; the formula still applies.
For uniqueness, length one gives just . If and , the next factor chooses the successor arrow at uniquely, because two distinct edges cannot meet at both endpoints in a tree. Subsequent factors force the same cyclic succession. Any arrow into an edge not incident with acts as zero, because that simple does not occur. An opposite nonexceptional leaf loop is the full socle path around , of length , hence zero on modules of length at most . If an opposite leaf is exceptional, then has multiplicity one and each incident simple occurs at most once; its nilpotent self-loop is zero on that one-dimensional vertex space as well.
The remaining action is one nilpotent successor chain. Choose a top generator and let be its successive path images for . Uniseriality makes each image nonzero in its respective radical layer; these images form a basis in the basic algebra description. Their labels are , the successor arrow sends to , and all other actions vanish. Any nonzero scalar choices are absorbed by rescaling this basis. This determines the module solely by its top and length.
If and , then and is the exceptional leaf. The successor is a single loop and its action is the unique nilpotent Jordan chain of length . The other branch either enters a different edge or is a redundant socle loop and contributes nothing. Hence the prescribed uniserial module is unique up to isomorphism for every positive integer .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2008 iii Paper 4 6 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
A finite-dimensional group algebra has finite representation type of a group algebra when there are only finitely many isomorphism classes of finite-dimensional indecomposable modules. The definition concerns all dimensions, not merely finitely many modules in each fixed dimension.
Let be the block idempotent and choose a maximal Brauer pair : is a block idempotent of with . The inertial index of a block iswhere is the stabilizer of the chosen pair. Changing the pair by conjugation does not alter this number. For cyclic , it is a prime-to- divisor of . Here , as required for the order- subgroup to exist.
Put . Since is characteristic in , , so Green correspondence applies. In fact the nonprojective modules in have a particularly simple correspondence. If , a nontrivial intersection would contain the unique order- subgroup of both cyclic groups, giving and hence , a contradiction. Thus every such intersection is trivial. The error modules in induction are projective. In restriction, an intersection cannot contain a conjugate of a nontrivial subgroup of by an element of : such a conjugate contains , and that would again force . The general Green correspondence therefore pairs all indecomposable modules with nontrivial module vertex contained in a conjugate of . In particular it pairs the nonprojective modules of with the nonprojective modules of its Brauer correspondent in ; the block-compatible form of the correspondence selects . Explicitly,where is projective and the restriction error family is . One should not replace this restriction error term by projectives without an additional argument about .
For the final structure calculation we use the general cyclic-defect structure theorem, which is permitted here as a general fact: the basic algebra of a split block with cyclic defect group is a Brauer tree algebra. Its tree has edges, one simple module per edge, and exceptional multiplicityFor a one-edge tree the basic algebra presentation is . This is the local presentation of the tree algebra, not an assertion that an arbitrary block with one simple module is automatically uniserial.
With the tree has one edge and . Thus the basic algebra of isIt has exactly one simple module, . Its ideals are precisely : for any nonzero element, factor out its lowest power of , after which the remaining factor is a unit. The regular projective therefore has the unique submodule chainwith each consecutive factor one-dimensional and simple. A Morita equivalence from to preserves simple modules, projective covers, submodule lattices and composition length. HenceIn the split setting one may also write . The projective cover has composition factors all isomorphic to , so its vector-space dimension is , not generally .
There is also an elementary reason why the uniserial conclusion follows once the one-simple-module conclusion and finite type are known. If the basic local algebra had , quotienting its radical square and all but two generators would give . The two-dimensional parameter family from Question 3(b) would then give infinitely many indecomposables. Thus is one-dimensional. Nakayama lemma makes generated by one element , so its powers yield a chain and the basic algebra is . The cyclic-defect calculation above identifies . This explains why finite representation type rules out branching in this projective cover.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2023 iii Paper 151 3 Solution 2026-09-28
The Artin–Wedderburn theorem says that every central simple algebra over has the form for a finite-dimensional central division algebra , uniquely up to the evident data. If and are central simple, extend scalars to an algebraic closure . Both become full matrix algebras, hencefor suitable . Any nonzero proper ideal of would extend to one in this simple matrix algebra, and faithful flatness prevents it from vanishing or becoming the whole algebra. The same scalar-extension argument shows that the center is . This proves the tensor product of central simple algebras theorem.
The Brauer group consists of Morita equivalence classes of central simple -algebras. Its product is , its identity is , and because is a full matrix algebra.
Let be a Finite Galois extension with Galois group , and let be a normalized two-cocycle. The crossed-product algebra of a Galois extension has underlying left -vector spaceand multiplicationThe cocycle identity is exactly associativity. After scalar extension to , the algebra acts by the twisted regular representation and becomes ; Galois descent shows that it is central simple over . If is multiplied by the coboundary of a one-cochain , rescaling by gives an isomorphic algebra. Hence the cohomological construction of a Brauer class gives a well-defined map
It remains to show that every Brauer class is torsion. For a finite group , restriction and corestriction on normalized bar cochains satisfyon cohomology: the first equality follows by summing the translated cochain over coset representatives, and each is the identity because an inner automorphism is cochain-homotopic to the identity. Restriction to the trivial subgroup is zero in positive degree, so this proves that finite-group cohomology is annihilated by the group order. In multiplicative notation, every therefore satisfies .
By the permitted assumption, is the image of such an for some . Consequently in . By the definition of Brauer equivalence, this says that for some ,as required.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2026 iii Paper 139 2 c Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
For a simple -module , matrix units show that every nonzero vector of generates all coordinates, so is a simple -module. Conversely, if is simple over the matrix ring, is a simple -module andthrough the maps induced by and . These constructions are inverse on isomorphism classes; this is the basic Morita equivalence for a matrix ring.