Zero divisors of support size 3 in group algebras and trinomials divided by irreducible polynomials over GF(2) (Q2039377)

Let \(\mathbb {F }\) be a field and \(G\) be a group. For any element \( \alpha =\sum_{g\in G} a_{g}g \) of the group algebra \(\mathbb {F }[G]\) the set \(supp( \alpha)=\lbrace g \in G | a_g \neq 0 \rbrace\) is said to be the support of \( \alpha\). The length of an element of \(\mathbb {F }[G]\) is defined as the size of its support. Non-zero elements \( \alpha, \beta \in \mathbb {F } [G]\) are said to be zero divisors if \( \alpha \beta = 0\) . In the presented paper zero divisors of length \(3\) in \(\mathbb {F }[G]\) are studied. It is proved that if \(G\) is a torsion-free residually finite \(p\)-group for some prime number \(p \neq 3\) then \(\mathbb {Q}[G]\) has no zero divisor of length \(3\), where \(\mathbb {Q}\) is the field of rational numbers (Theorem 1.2). There are also considered zero divisors of length \(3\) in group algebras \(\mathbb {F }_2 [G]\) and some relation of the subject with coding theory, where \(\mathbb {F }_2 \) is the field of two elements. In particular, it is proved that if \(G\) is a group, \(x\in G\), \(n:=o(x) > 2\) and \( \alpha \in \lbrace 1+x+x^3, 1+x^2 +x^3 \rbrace \subset \mathbb {F }_2 [G] \) is a zero divisor then \(n\) must be a multiple of \(7\) (Theorem 1.6).