Computational aspects of Burnside rings. II: Important maps (Q2028016)

The Burnside ring \(B(G)\) of a finite group \(G\) is defined as the Grothendieck ring of the isomorphism classes of finite \(G\)-sets where the ring structure is given by disjoint union and Cartesian product. A fundamental tool for studying \(B(G)\) is the table of marks \(T(G)\), which is a matrix where the rows and the columns are inexed by conjugacy classes of subgroups of \(G\) and for two subgroups \(K\) and \(L\), the entry \(\left[K\right]-\left[L\right]\) at their conjugacy classes is given by the number of \(L\)-fixed points of the transitive \(G\)-set \(\left[G/K\right]\). In this paper, the authors provide algorithms which explicitly compute several well-known maps between Burnside rings of two groups \(F\) and \(G\) in terms of the entries of the tables of marks. The algorithms require \(T(F)\) and \(T(G)\) as their input. The maps that the authors consider are the restriction map, the induction map, the projection map, the inflation map, the conjugation isomorphism and the Frobenius-Wielandt homomorphism. Letting \(N\trianglelefteq G\geq H\), the ring \(B(G/N)\) can injectively be embedded into \(B(G)\) via the inflation map, so one can realize \(T(G/N)\) as a submatrix of \(T(G)\). The provided algorithms for the projection map and the inflation map are therefore relatively simpler compared to the restriction map and the induction map. For the latter case, authors had to prove a formula (Proposition 2.6) regarding the splitting of the \(G\)-conjugacy classes in \(H\). From the paper's point of view, the conjugaction map is not very interesting in its own as \(T(H)=T(g^{-1}Hg)\). However it does appear in the Mackey formula, but the authors were unable to provide an algorithm for this case. The Frobenius-Wielandt homomorphism is a map from \(B(C_{|G|})\) to \(B(G)\) where \(C_{|G|}\) is the cyclic group of order \(|G|\). An algorithm for this map is also provided and it yielded a method for checking wheter \(G\) is nilpotent or not (Remark 6.7 (c)), however, as pointed out by the authors, simpler methods for this purpose already exists.