Reduced groups of abelian group rings (Q1898421)

The author studies reduced groups of the Grothendieck group of commutative group rings. It is shown that if \(R\) is a commutative regular ring with \(\text{char }R\neq 0\) and \(G\) a finitely generated abelian group, then the following conditions are equivalent: (i) \(\widetilde {K}_0 RG\) is a torsion group; (ii) \(\widetilde {K}_0 R\) is a torsion group and if \(G\) has an element of prime order \(p\), then \(p\) is a nonunit of \(R\). As a consequence, the author proves that if \(R\) is a field and \(G\) a finitely generated abelian group, then \(\widetilde {K}_0 RG\) is a torsion group if and only if \(G\) is torsion-free. Some further related results are also proved.