Fibered biset functors (Q1989712)

Let \(G\) be a finite group, and \(A\) an abelian group. The \(A\)-fibered Burnside ring \(B^A(G)\) is the Grothendieck group of \(A\)-fibered \(G\)-sets, which are \(G\times A\)-sets with finitely many orbits free as \(A\)-sets. A \(\mathbb{Z}\)-basis of \(B^A(G)\) is parametrized by \(G\)-conjugacy classes of pairs \((H,\phi)\), where \(H\) is a subgroup of \(G\) and \(\phi \in \Hom(H, A)\). Denote by \(B^A(G, H) = B^A(G \times H)\) the Grothendieck groups of \(A\)-fibered \((G,H)\)-bisets. One may also consider the \(A\)-fibered biset category over a commutative ring \(k\), denoted by \(\mathcal{C}^A_k\). Its objects are finite groups, and morphism are given by \(B^A_k(G,H):=k\otimes B^A(G,H)\). The \(k\)-linear functors from \(\mathcal{C}^A_k\) to \({}_k\mathsf{Mod}\), with natural transformations, form the abelian category \(\mathcal{F}^A_k\) of \(A\)-fibered biset functors over \(k\). This turns out to be a natural framework for operations induced by monomial bimodules, and it extends Bouc's theory of biset functors. The main result of this paper is the classification of simple fibered biset functors. First, the authors study the tensor product of \(A\)-fibered bisets and how transitive \(A\)-fibered bisets can be factored through smaller groups. For this, a Mackey formula for the tensor product of two transitive \(A\)-fibered bisets is obtained. Next, they find the simple modules of the endomorphism algebra \(E^A_k (G) = B^A_k (G, G)\) which are annihilated by the ideal \(I^A_k(G)\) of endomorphisms that factor through groups of smaller order. The main result of the paper say that that the simple \(A\)-fibered biset functors are parametrized by equivalence classes of quadruples \((G, K, \kappa, [V ])\), where \(G\) is a finite group, \((K, \kappa)\) is a so-called reduced pair, with \(K\) a normal subgroup of \(G\) and \(\kappa:K\to A\) a \(G\)-stable map, and \([V]\) is the isomorphism class of a simple \(k\Gamma(G,K,\kappa)\)-module, where the groups \(\Gamma(G,K,\kappa)\) are identified as extensions of a subgroup of the outer automorphism group \(\mathrm{Out}(G/K)\) determined by \(\kappa\) and the group \(\mathrm{Hom}(G/K, A)\). Under a further hypothesis on the group \(A\), a pair \((K, \kappa)\) is reduced if and only if \(K \leq Z(G) \cap G'\) and \(\kappa\) is injective. Finally, as applications, some representation rings are realized as simple fibered biset functors. Note that when \(A\) is the unit group of a field \(F\), one obtains a natural linearization map from \(B^A(G)\) to various representation rings of \(FG\)-modules, by mapping the class of \((H, \phi)\) to \(\mathrm{Ind}^G_H(K_\phi)\), where \(K_\phi\) denotes the one-dimensional \(FH\)-module associated with the map \(\phi: H \to K^\times\). Then one can interpret these representation rings as \(A\)-fibered biset functors.