Grothendieck groups of integral nilpotent group rings (Q798759)

Let R be a Dedekind domain, G a finite group, RG the group ring of G over R and \(G_ 0(RG)\) the Grothendieck group of the category of finitely generated RG-modules. The purpose of this paper is to generalize \textit{H. Lenstra}'s [J. Pure Appl. Algebra 20, 173-193 (1981; Zbl 0467.16016)] calculation of \(G_ 0(RG)\) from abelian groups G to nilpotent groups G. Let K be the quotient field of R and KG be the group algebra of G over K. From a part of the author's introduction: ''From now on, let G be a finite nilpotent group and for an irreducible K-character \(\theta\) of G we denote by \(e(\theta)\) the central primitive idempotent of KG (or \(KG/G_ p\) if \(p=ch(K)\) is not prime to the order \(| G|\) of G, where \(G_ p\) denotes a Sylow p-subgroup of G) corresponding to \(\theta\). Let \(\pi\) (G) and \(\pi\) (\(\theta)\) be the sets of all prime divisors of the order of G and the order \(n(\theta)\) of G/Ker \(\theta\), respectively. In order to obtain an analogue of Lenstra's formula, we set \(RG<e(\theta)>=RGe(\theta)[X]/(n(\theta)X-1).\) Theorem 1. Let G be a finite nilpotent group. Then we have the following isomorphism: \(G_ 0(RG)\simeq\oplus_{\theta\in Y}G_ 0(RG<e(\theta)>),\) where Y is the set of all isomorphism classes of irreducible K-characters of G.'' The author also investigates the structure of \(G_ 0(RG<e(\theta)>)\). In a paper following the one above by Lenstra, \textit{M. Liu} [ibid. 24, 287-291 (1982; Zbl 0488.18004)] has given a formula for \(G_ 1(RG)\) in which the group G is finite abelian. The author [ibid. 29, 151-153 (1983; Zbl 0519.18014)] has generalized this to finite nilpotent groups.