Cohomology rings of finite groups. With an appendix: Calculations of cohomology rings of groups of order dividing 64. (Q1419865)

Over the last thirty years, the cohomology of groups was developed to be not only a theory on its own, but also to be a powerful tool in the study of group representations. This involves cohomology of rings and the geometry of spectra over these rings. This is the main goal to cover for the authors of the book. Some other books concerning the cohomology of finite groups have appeared, but they are at least ten years old, and the computational tools that have been developed since then, make this book to be really valuable for both professionals and students. The book is structured in 14 chapters (337 pages) and 7 big appendices (that cover about 400 pages). The first two chapters cover a standard review of homological algebra and modular representation theory of groups, and the next five chapters present some of the standard tools for the subject: projective resolutions, spectral sequences, norm maps, Steenrod operations. The newer approach covers the last seven chapters: connections with geometry (theorems on projective resolutions as tensor products of periodic complexes, hypercohomology spectral sequence), discussion of the varieties of cohomology rings defined over other coefficients, detection of the cohomology by centralizers of elementary Abelian subgroups of the group, the relationships between the mod-\(p\) cohomology of a group and its Sylow \(p\)-subgroups, computer calculations of cohomology rings. This book is almost self-contained and it is very useful not only for scientists working on cohomology of finite groups, but, with a little effort, for all of those that are using the cohomology instruments in their work.