Reductivity properties over an affine base (Q1983964)

This very useful survey article brings together some key ideas for working with (flat) affine group schemes over arbitrary commutative rings, and their invariants. Over a field, the notion of reductivity (or, more precisely, geometric reductivity) is key -- it guarantees that the rings of invariants are finitely generated. One of the main points of this article is to show that the correct generalisation of this over an arbitrary commutative ring is \emph{power reductivity}. Let \(k\) be a commutative ring, and \(G\) a flat affine group scheme over \(k\). Then \(G\) is \emph{power reductive} over \(k\) if the following property holds: For every surjective map \(\varphi:M\to k\) of \(G\)-modules, there is a positive integer \(d\) such that the \(d^{\text{th}}\) symmetric power of \(\varphi\) is a split surjection; in other words, the kernel of \(S^d\varphi\) has a \(G\)-stable complement in \(S^dM\). Note that since \(S^dk\) identifies with the degree \(d\) part of the polynomial ring \(k[x]\), such a splitting of \(S^d\varphi\) is giving an invariant in the module \(S^dM\). The main result on power reductivity is that if \(A\) is a finitely-generated \(k\)-algebra on which \(G\) acts by algebra automorphisms, and \(G\) is power reductive, then the invariant ring \(A^G\) is finitely-generated. Conversely, if \(G\) has finitely-generated invariants in every finitely-generated \(k\)-algebra upon which it acts by automorphisms, then \(G\) is power reductive. The paper surveys some of the other properties of power reductivity, for example showing in general that power rediuctivity implies geometric reductivity (where the definition of geometric reductivity over a base ring which is not a field becomes rather more tricky to formulate).