A characterization of P. I. algebras with bounded multiplicities of the cocharacters (Q1306843)

Let \(A\) be a PI-algebra over a field \(F\) of characteristic 0 and let \(\chi_n(A)=\sum_{\lambda\vdash n}m_\lambda\chi_\lambda\) be the \(n\)-th cocharacter of (the multilinear polynomial identities of) \(A\), \(n=1,2,\ldots\), where \(\chi_\lambda\) is the character of the symmetric group \(S_n\) associated with the partition \(\lambda\) of \(n\). It is well known that the behaviour of the degree of \(\chi_n(A)\), called the \(n\)-th codimension of \(A\), impacts very much on the properties of the algebra. In the general case the multiplicities \(m_\lambda\) are polynomially bounded. The authors give the complete characterization in several different ways of the polynomial identities of the algebra \(A\) with the property that the multiplicities \(m_\lambda\) are bounded by a constant. It turns out that these identities in some sense are very close to the polynomial identities of the Grassmann algebra. The main result gives that \(m_\lambda\leq c\) for a fixed constant \(c\) and for all \(\lambda\) if and only if \(A\) satisfies a polynomial identity which does not hold for the algebra of \(2\times 2\) upper triangular matrices. Equivalently, there exists a constant \(M\) such that \(m_\lambda\not=0\) only for those \(\lambda\) such that the corresponding Young diagram has less than \(M\) boxes outside of the first row and of the first column. One more equivalent condition is that the algebra \(A\) satisfies a nontrivial polynomial identity \(f(x,y)=0\) which depends on two variables \(x\) and \(y\) only and is linear in \(y\).