Schur rings. (Q1039425)

Schur rings are subrings of a group ring \(\mathbb{C}(G)\) with a linear basis coming from a special partition of the group \(G\). Their study was initiated and developed by \textit{H. Wielandt} in his book ``Finite permutation groups'' [New York and London: Academic Press (1964; Zbl 0138.02501)], building on ideas of Schur, and their representations investigated by \textit{O. Tamaschke} [see Math. Z. 117, 340-360 (1970; Zbl 0204.35203)]. In this paper the authors give a survey of recent developments in the theory of Schur rings, including important aspects of the relationship between Schur rings and association schemes, and applications to algebraic combinatorics. They summarise the Schur-Wielandt theory, with emphasis on Schur rings over a cyclic group, and describe how this theory has helped answer questions about Cayley graph isomorphism and a question of Brouwer about locally Paley graphs, and achieve a classification of arc-transitive circulants. Further details may be found in an earlier overview paper by \textit{M. Muzychuk, M. Klin} and \textit{R. Pöschel} [in DIMACS, Ser. Discrete Math. Theor. Comput. Sci. 56, 241-264 (2001; Zbl 0979.05079)].