Support varieties for selfinjective algebras. (Q2434056)

For a finite group the cohomology ring with values in a Noetherian ring is graded commutative Noetherian, and the ring modulo nilpotent elements can be stratified by cohomology rings of elementary Abelian subgroups. For a module of the group one studies the ideal of the group cohomology ring given by the annihilators of the Ext-algebra of the module. This ideal gives rise to an algebraic variety, the module variety. Carlson, Benson and others studied the module variety very intensively. The paper under review generalizes a good deal of what is known for groups to finite dimensional algebras \(\Lambda\) over an algebraically closed field. Let \(H\) be a subalgebra of the Hochschild cohomology ring of \(\Lambda\) satisfying two general important properties: First, \(H\) is Noetherian graded with degree \(0\) component being \(HH^0(\Lambda)\), and second for all \(\Lambda\)-modules \(M\) and \(N\) one has \(\text{Ext}^*_\Lambda(M,N)\) is a finitely generated \(H\)-module. Examples are given when this is not satisfied. Nevertheless, there are examples of \(H\) where this is satisfied. In a first section the authors show that if \(\text{Ext}^*_\Lambda(M,\Lambda/\text{rad}(\Lambda))\) is a finitely generated \(H\)-module, then the complexity of \(M\) equals the dimension of the variety of \(M\) in \(H\), and both values are finite. Using this and the dual statement then if \(\text{Ext}^*_\Lambda(D(\Lambda^{op}),\Lambda/\text{rad}(\Lambda))\) and \(\text{Ext}^*_\Lambda(\Lambda/\text{rad}(\Lambda),\Lambda)\) are finitely generated \(H\)-modules, the algebra \(\Lambda\) is Gorenstein. In a second section the authors define analogues of the special modules associated to a cocycle of the cohomology ring via a pushout construction and prove certain of their properties. Using this, they show that given a homogeneous ideal in \(H\), then there is a module over \(\Lambda\) so that the variety of this module equals the variety of this ideal. In the next section the authors show that if the complexity of a module is one then the module is periodic. The authors use this fact to show that whenever the Nakayama functor is of finite order on any indecomposable \(\Lambda\)-module, then the tree class of any component of the stable Auslander-Reiten quiver is \(A_n\), \(D_n\), \(E_6\), \(E_7\), \(E_8\), \(A_\infty\), \(D_\infty\), \(A_\infty^\infty\) or a Euclidean diagram. Finally the authors show that the variety of an indecomposable module is connected.