Crossed product criteria and skew linear groups (Q1177267)

This paper investigates the structure of certain classes of skew linear groups \(G\), that is subgroups of \(GL(n,D)\) where \(D\) is a division algebra over some field \(F\). The bulk of the article is concerned with describing the \(F\)-subalgebra \(F[G]\subseteq Mat(n,D)\) that is generated by \(G\), and the basic approach is to view \(F[G]\) as an image of the group algebra \(FG\), say \(F[G]\cong FG/I\). By exhibiting suitable normal subgroups \(N\) of \(G\) so that \(I=(I\cap FN)FG\) holds, one can write \(F[G]\) as a crossed product, \(F[G]\cong(FN/I\cap FN)*G/N\). For the most part, \(G\) is assumed to belong to the class of groups \(\langle P,L\rangle{\mathfrak A}\), where \({\mathfrak A}\) denotes the class of abelian groups and \(\langle P,L\rangle\) is the closure operation generated by the poly and local operators \(P\) and \(L\). The main result states that if \(G\in\langle P,L\rangle{\mathfrak A}\) and if all subalgebras \(F[H]\subseteq Mat(n,D)\) for characteristic subgroups \(H\) of \(G\) are prime, then \(N\) above can be chosen to be a specific \(FC\)-subgroup of \(G\) which, for solvable \(G\), is closely related to the so-called Zalesskij subgroup. As an application, it is shown that if \(G\) is an absolutely irreducible subgroup of \(GL(n,D)\) (so \(F[G]=Mat(n,D))\) and if \(H\) is a normal subgroup of \(G\) with \(H\in\langle P,L\rangle{\mathfrak A}\) then \(H\) and \(G/C_ G(H)\) are both abelian-by-periodic.