On subalgebras of \(n \times n\) matrices not satisfying identities of degree \(2n - 2\) (Q1434390)

The paper is concerned with \(n\times n\) matrix subalgebras that do not satisfy a polynomial identity of degree \(< 2n\). Let \(F\) be a field, \(M_n(F)\) the algebra of \(n \times n\) matrices over \(F\), and \(F\{X\}=F\{X_1, X_2, \dots\}\) the free associative algebra over \(F\) in countably many variables. A nonzero polynomial \(f(X_1,\dots X_m) \in F\{X\}\) is a \textit{polynomial identity} for an \(F\)-algebra \(R\) if \(f(r_1, \dots ,r_m)=0\) for all \(r_1, \dots , r_m \in R\). The standard polynomial of degree \(t\) is \[ s_t(X_1, \dots, X_t) = \sum_{\sigma \in S_t} (sg\; \sigma) X_{\sigma(1)}X_{\sigma(2)} \ldots X_{\sigma(t)}, \] where \(S_t\) is the symmetric group on \(\{1, \dots, t\}\) and \((sg\; \sigma)\) is the sign of the permutation \(\sigma \in S_t\). The standard polynomial \(s_t\) is homogeneous of degree \(t\), multilinear and alternating. If \(t\) is odd then \(s_t(1,X_2,\dots , X_t)=s_{t-1}(X_2, \dots , X_t)\). Thus \(s_{2t}\) is an identity of \(R\) if and only if \(s_{2t+1}\) is an identity of \(R\). The Amitsur-Levitski theorem asserts that \(M_n(F)\) satisfies any standard polynomial of degree \(2n\) or higher. Moreover, if \(M_n(F)\) satisfies a polynomial of degree \(2n\), then the polynomial is a scalar multiple of \(s_{2n}\) [cf. \textit{S. A. Amitsur} and \textit{J. Levitski}, Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 1, 449--463 (1950; Zbl 0040.01101)]. In this paper the author presents and proves the following theorem: Let \(A\) be a subalgebra of \(M_n(F)\). If \(A\) does not satisfy the standard polynomial \(s_{2n-2}\), then \(A\) is equivalent to a full block upper triangular matrix algebra.