Noetherian rings of polynomial functions on abelian groups (Q1759600)

Let \(G\) be a commutative topological group, \(f: G \to \mathbb C\) a function and \(y\in G\). Define \(\Delta_yf : G \to \mathbb C\) by \(\Delta_yf(x)=f(x+y)-f(x)\). For any positive integer \(n\) and for any \(y_1,\dotsc , y_n\) in \(G\), set \(\Delta_{y_1,\dotsc , y_n}=\Delta_{y_1}\circ \dotsb \circ \Delta_{y_n}\). A continuous function \(f\) on \(G\) is called a \textit{polynomial function of degree at most \(n\)} if \(\Delta_{y_1,\dotsc , y_n}f(x)=0\), for all \(x,y_1,\dotsc , y_n\) in \(G\). Let us denote the ring of the polynomial functions on \(G\) by \(R[G]\). Let \(P\) be a complex polynomial of degree \(N\) in \(n\) variables, and let \(a_1,\dotsc , a_n\) be continuous, complex-valued homomorphisms on \(G\). Then the function \(x\mapsto P(a_1(x),\dotsc , a_n(x))\) is a polynomial function (in the above sense) of degree at most \(N\), called a \textit{polynomial} on \(G\). The main result of the paper, stated in Theorem 3, is as follows. Let \(\operatorname{Hom} (G,\mathbb C )\) denote the linear space of continuous homomorphisms of \(G\) into the additive group of \(\mathbb C\). Then the following statements are equivalent. (i) The dimension of \(\operatorname{Hom} (G,\mathbb C )\) is finite. (ii) Every polynomial function on \(G\) is a polynomial. (iii) The ring \(R[G]\) is Noetherian. When \(G\) is discrete and commutative, the above result on \(R[G]\) is related to the problem of spectral synthesis on \(G\). In Theorem 4, the author shows that, for such groups the following are equivalent. (i) The torsion free rank of \(G\) is finite. (ii) \(R[G]\) is Noetherian. (iii) Spectral synthesis holds on \(G\).