Projective Schur groups of Henselian fields (Q860421)

For a field \(F\) the projective Schur group \(PS(F)\) is the subgroup of the Brauer group \(\text{Br}(F)\) of \(F\) consisting of all classes of central simple \(F\)-algebras which can be represented by a simple component of a projective (or twisted) group algebra of some finite group over \(F\). One of the main results of the paper under review says that \(PS(F)\) is algebraic provided the field \(F\) is a Henselian valued field of equal characteristic whose residue field is a local or global field, i.e. for such a field \(F\) there is an algebraic extension \(L/K\) such that \(PS(F)\) is equal to the relative Brauer group \(\text{Br}(L/K)\) consisting of all elements of \(\text{Br}(F)\) which are split by \(L\). They also show by an example that an analogous result does not hold for the usual Schur subgroup of a number field. In order to obtain their main results about \(PS(F)\) the authors first show how \(PS(F)\) is determined by \(PS(k)\) for an equicharacteristic Henselian field with arbitrary residue field \(k\). An important aspect of their approach is the use of a Langrangian subgroup of a finite abelian group which is equipped with a nondegenerate symplectic pairing. This concept occurs naturally in the study of projective Schur algebras of Abelian type. They also show how some of the previous results of the first two authors on the projective Schur group, which were published in an impressive series of papers, can be obtained by the methods developed in the paper under review.