Group rings of proper ascending HNN extensions of countably infinite free groups are primitive. (Q2466936)

The author investigates the problem of primitivity of group rings of a certain type of extensions of groups for a field \(K\). Let \(F\) be a group and let \(\varphi\colon F\to F\) be a monomorphism. The ascending HNN exstension corresponding to \(\varphi\) is the group \(F_\varphi=\langle F,t\mid t^{-1}ft=\varphi(f)\rangle\). A ring is (right) primitive if it has a faithful irreducible (right) module. Let \(F\) be a free group and \(K\) a field. The goal of the paper under review is to study the primitivity of the group ring \(KF_\varphi\). The main result is the following Theorem 1.1. Let \(F\) be a non-Abelian free group, and \(F_\varphi\) the ascending HNN exstension of \(F\) determinated by \(\varphi\). (i) In case \(\varphi(F)=F\), the group ring \(KF_\varphi\) is primitive for a field \(K\) if and only if either \(|K|\leq|F|\) or \(F_\varphi\) is not virtually the direct product \(F\times\mathbb{Z}\). (ii) In case \(\varphi(F)\neq F\), if the rank of \(F\) is at most countably infinite, then the group ring \(KF_\varphi\) is primitive for any field \(K\). In order to prove this theorem the author has overcome some significant difficulties. In section 2 and section 3 the author proves some auxiliary lemmas and states some related results, which are necessary for the proof of Theorem 1.1. The following result is also of some interest. Corollary 3.7. Let \(F\) be a non-Abelian free group of at most countably infinite rank, and \(F_\varphi\) the ascending HNN extension of \(F\) determined by \(\varphi\). If \(K\) is any field then the group ring \(KF_\varphi\) is semiprimitive. The author poses the following problem: Problem 3.8. Is it true that the group ring of any locally free group is primitive?