Wild algebras have one-point extensions of representation dimension at least four. (Q1025069)

Let \(\Lambda\) be an Artin algebra. Following Auslander, the representation dimension \(\text{repdim\,}\Lambda\) of \(\Lambda\) is defined to be the minimum of the global dimension of the endomorphism ring of a module \(M\) in \(\Lambda\)-mod, where \(M\) is both a generator and cogenerator. By Auslander's result, \(\Lambda\) has finite representation type if and only if it has representation dimension at most two. The representation dimension was hoped to be a good measure of how far a representation infinite algebra is from having finite representation type, thus it is natural to ask for connections between the representation dimension of an algebra and its representation type (tame or wild). In particular, it has been conjectured whether \(\Lambda\) is of tame type would imply that \(\text{repdim\,}\Lambda\) is at most three. Note that in general \(\Lambda\) with \(\text{repdim\,}\Lambda\) at most three need not be of tame type, with any wild hereditary algebra being a counterexample. In this article, the author shows that if \(\Lambda\) is a finite dimensional \(k\)-algebra of wild representation type, then there is a one-point extension \(\Lambda[M]\) such that \(\text{repdim\,}\Lambda[M]\geq 4\). More generally, if \(\Lambda\) is of wild representation type and \(n\) is any natural number, then there is an \(n\)-point extension \(\Lambda[M_1][M_2]\cdots[M_n]\) of representation dimension at least \(n+3\).