On the use of Külshammer type invariants in representation theory. (Q1758767)

This is a survey article on methods which have been used in recent years in order to distinguish derived equivalence classes of finite-dimensional algebras. These methods have their origin in work of this reviewer in the eighties who defined a sequence of ideals in the center of a symmetric algebra over a field of prime characteristic \(p\). These ideals are called Külshammer ideals here and include, as a special case, the Reynolds ideal. The author has proved that these ideals are invariant under derived equivalences. In the paper under review, the author gives a definition of the Külshammer ideals and certain variants which have been used in connection with stable equivalences of Morita type. The author's generalizations to Hochschild (co-)homology are also mentioned. Moreover, the author explains some of the applications of these methods. These include algebras of dihedral, semidihedral and quaternion type and several other classes of (mostly tame) algebras. Reviewer's remarks: (1) The author gives the impression that the number of irreducible representations (up to equivalence) of a finite group over an algebraically closed field of prime characteristic was determined by R. Brauer in 1956. However, this fact was proved by R. Brauer in 1935 already. (2) The algebras which are called self-injective in this paper are usually called Frobenius algebras; the algebras which are usually called self-injective form a wider class of algebras (also called quasi-Frobenius algebras).