Complexity and cohomology of cohomological Mackey functors. (Q1018425)

A Mackey functor for a finite group \(G\) associates to a subgroup of \(G\) a \(k\)-vector space for a field \(k\) of finite characteristic \(p\) and is furnished with operations transfer and restriction, motivated by group cohomology with values in the ring which is the most natural example. Moreover, several axioms have to be satisfied, mainly the Mackey formula coming from induction from subgroups and restriction to subgroups, and some other axioms which are natural within the above example. A Mackey functor is cohomological if transfer of a restriction with respect to the same subgroups is just multiplication by the index of the subgroups. The category of cohomological Mackey functors can be interpreted as a module category of a certain algebra, called the algebra of cohomological Mackey functors, which is obtained by taking the free algebra on the symbols transfer, restriction, conjugation, modulo the relations which are just the axioms of a Mackey functor. The interplay of the interpretations as functor category or as module category is crucial in the subject. A module over an algebra is of polynomial growth if and only if there is a projective resolution of this module where the dimensions of the homogeneous components of the projective modules grow at most as a polynomial. Every simple module is of polynomial growth if and only if every module is of polynomial growth, as is readily shown. A Mackey functor is of polynomial growth if the corresponding module seen as module of the algebra of cohomological Mackey functors is of polynomial growth. The paper under review shows that every finitely generated Mackey functor \(M\) for \(G\) over \(k\) is of polynomial growth if and only if a Sylow \(p\)-subgroup of \(G\) is cyclic in case \(p>2\) or has sectional \(2\)-rank at most \(2\) in case \(p=2\). In case \(p=2\) and an elementary Abelian \(2\)-group and a certain crucial simple functor \(S_1^G\) the Poincaré series is determined explicitly and even generators and relations of the Ext-algebra. The case of odd \(p\) is stated as a conjecture and proved for \(p=3\). The most ingenious proof is very involved, and reduces first to elementary Abelian groups, and then studies this situation in detail. Besides the actual scope of the paper, many interesting pieces of information on Mackey functors and on cohomological Mackey functors are shown.