An analogue of Pfister's local-global principle in the Burnside ring (Q1809038)

Let \(N/K\) be a Galois extension with Galois group \(\mathcal G\), and let \(\mathcal B(\mathcal G)\) denote the Burnside ring of \(\mathcal G\), which as an abelian group is the free group on the set \[ \{\chi_{\mathcal H} \mid \mathcal H \;\text{runs over representatives of conjugacy classes of subgroups of } \mathcal G\}. \] Then a result of Springer states that there is a homomorphism \(h_{N/K} : \mathcal B(\mathcal G) \to W(K)\) such that \(h_{N/K}(\chi_{\mathcal H})\) is the trace form from the fixed field \(N^{\mathcal H}\) of \(\mathcal H\) in \(N\) to \(K\), for all subgroups \(\mathcal H\) of \(\mathcal G\). The trace ideal \(\mathcal T(\mathcal G)\) of \(\mathcal B(\mathcal G)\) is defined by \(\mathcal T(\mathcal G) = \cap \ker(h_{N/K})\), where the intersection is taken over all Galois extensions \(N/K\) over all fields \(K\) of characteristic \(\neq 2\) with Galois group \(G(N/K) \simeq \mathcal G\). It is shown that for a finite group \(\mathcal G\), the trace ideal is a free abelian group of rank equal to the rank of \(\mathcal B(\mathcal G)\) minus the number of conjugacy classes of elements \(\sigma \in \mathcal G\) of order \(\leq 2\). A signature homomorphism sign\(_\sigma : \mathcal B(\mathcal G) \to Z\) is introduced for each element \(\sigma \in \mathcal G\) of order \(\leq 2\); these signature homomorphisms correspond to signatures of the Witt ring. It is shown that the torsion subgroup of \(\mathcal B(\mathcal G)/\mathcal T(\mathcal G)\) coincides with the kernel of the total signature homomorphism. The proof is obtained by first reducing to the case of \(2\)-groups, and then using an induction argument via the Frattini subgroup of \(\mathcal G\).