Sofic groups and direct finiteness. (Q1763893)

Recall that a unital ring \(R\) is called directly finite if \(xy=1\) implies \(yx=1\) for all \(x,y\in R\). The ring \(R\) is called stably finite if the matrix ring \(M(n,R)\) is directly finite for all \(n\geq 1\). In this paper the authors introduce the notion of a sofic group and prove that if \(G\) is a sofic group and \(D\) is a division ring, then the group ring \(DG\) is stably finite. Moreover, \(DG\) can be embedded into a simple continuous von Neumann regular group ring \(RG\) [see \textit{K. R. Goodearl}, Von Neumann regular rings (Monogr. Stud. Math. 4, Pitman, Boston) (1979; Zbl 0411.16007)].