How statement and proof provenance work
The first chip identifies the source of the statement or construction; the second identifies the source of its local proof or verification.
- Literature-sourced: the exact statement appears in a cited source; only wording and notation differ.
- AI-adapted: a semantically identical restatement of literature-sourced material, modulo indexing, notation, and boundary cases adopted by the library.
- AI-generated: a genuinely novel statement formulated by AI, with no source for the claim itself.
These labels describe origin, not correctness: citations and verification chips remain separate evidence.
The group ring is a unital -algebra with basis , and each is a unit of
Statement
Let be a commutative ring and let be a group. Write for the basis vector of The group ring of finitely supported formal -linear combinations of group elements indexed by .
There is a unique -bilinear multiplication on satisfying With this product, is a unital -algebra whose underlying -module has basis . Its identity is , where is the identity of , and every basis element is a unit with inverse .
Facts & Assumptions
Given: A commutative ring and a group with identity .
The module is free on the set , with basis vectors , and every element has a unique finite expansion (The group ring of finitely supported formal -linear combinations of group elements).
Every set map from a set to a left -module extends uniquely to an -module homomorphism from the free module (Universal property of the free module on a set).
An -algebra is a unital ring equipped with a central unital map , and the multiplication is -bilinear (Algebras over a commutative ring, central structure maps, and algebra homomorphisms).
Proof
For each fixed , the set map , , extends uniquely by [L2] to an -linear map with for every .
For each fixed , the set map , , extends uniquely by [L2] to an -linear map . Define the product by .
By construction, . The map is -linear because is, and if then , so the -linearity of each makes linear as well. Thus the product is -bilinear.
For fixed , the maps and are -linear by step 3.1, so it is enough to compare them on basis elements . For fixed the maps and are likewise linear, so it is enough to compare them on basis elements . Repeating once more in the variable reduces associativity to basis triples, where by associativity in . Hence the product on is associative.
The same bilinear reduction shows that is a two-sided identity, because and for every basis element. Likewise , so each is a unit with inverse .
The map defined by is additive and satisfies and by steps 3.1 and 4.2. For every basis element , one has ; bilinearity extends this equality to every element of .
If is any other -bilinear product with , then for and bilinearity forces , which is exactly the product already constructed in steps 1.1-3.1. Therefore the multiplication is unique, and with steps 4.1-5.1 it makes a unital -algebra as in [L3].
Depends on
Used by
- The augmentation map ε:R[G]→ R and the augmentation ideal I_G=kerε Definition
- The trivial representation, the regular representation, and permutation representations from finite G-sets Definition
- Any nontrivial finite group algebra has zero divisors coming from a nonidentity cyclic subgroup Example
- For a commutative ring R, R-linear G-actions are exactly the compatible left R[G]-module structures Theorem
- For a field k, the group algebra k[G] is commutative if and only if G is abelian Theorem
Dependency tree · two levels
8 results within two dependency steps of this one, each drawn at its shortest distance from it. An arrow runs from a result to what uses it, so the chart reads left to right and ends at this result, which carries a heavier outline. Every node is a link to that result. Click elsewhere on the chart to enlarge it.
Sources
- Peter Webb, A Course in Finite Group Representation Theory, Chapter 1 Section 1.1 (standard reference, not scraped)