A note on blocks with Abelian defect groups. (Q2466504)

The motivation of the research is from an observation by Murray in 2002 that for a field \(F\) of characteristic \(p>0\) and a symmetric or alternating group \(G\), the \(F\)-subspace \(\mathbb{Z}_{p'}FG\) of the group algebra \(FG\) spanned by all \(p\)-regular class sums in \(G\) is multiplicatively closed. In fact, Meyer proved in 2006 that if \(G\) has an Abelian Sylow \(p\)-subgroup \(P\), \(\mathbb{Z}_{p'}FG\) is multiplicatively closed. There are examples showing that in general \(\mathbb{Z}_{p'}FG\) may not be multiplicatively closed. This paper considers the \(F\)-space \(\mathbb{Z}_{p'}A=A\cap\mathbb{Z}_{p'}FG\) of the center \(ZA\) of \(A\), for a block \(A\) of a group algebra \(FG\), and generalizes Meyer's result to blocks. It shows that for a block \(A\) with an Abelian defect group \(D\), the \(F\)-space \(\mathbb{Z}_{p'}A\) is multiplicatively closed. Instead of using a transfer argument in Meyer's proof, the paper uses the result by Fan and Külshammer-Okuyama-Watanabe that for a block \(A\) of group algebra \(\mathcal OG\) with maximum \(A\)-subpair \((D,b_D)\) and \(D\) is Abelian, \(Q=C_D(N_G(D,b_D))\subseteq Z(G)\) and an idempotent \(i\) in \(A\), there exists a unitary subalgebra \(C\) of \(iAi\) such that the multiplication map \(\mathcal OQ\otimes_{\mathcal O}C\to iAi\), \(x\otimes y\mapsto xy\) is an isomorphism of \(\mathcal O\)-algebras. A corollary of the result is the connection to the perfect isometries defined by Broué in 1990. The paper shows that for blocks \(A,B\) with Abelian defect groups in finite groups, the isomorphism of \(F\)-algebras \(ZB\to ZA\) is induced by a perfect isometry map \(\mathbb{Z}_{p'}B\) onto \(\mathbb{Z}_{p'}A\). Thus the \(F\)-algebra \(\mathbb{Z}_{p'}A\) provides a new invariant of perfect isometries for blocks with Abelian defect groups.