T-spaces and their applications. (Q2488372)

Two decades ago Kemer's celebrated results resolved in the affirmative the long-standing Specht Problem: Does every associative algebra over a field of characteristic 0 possess a finite basis of its polynomial identities? Since then much work has been done around similar problems for algebras over other fields, for nonassociative algebras and other algebraic systems. It is now well known that T-spaces can provide a sort of unifying framework for the resolution (positive or negative) to the Specht Problem for various algebraic systems over infinite fields. Several of the main contributions in this area are due to the authors of the survey under review. Let \(K\) be a field and let \(K(X)\) be the free associative algebra freely generated over \(K\) by the set of variables \(X\). A T-ideal of \(K(X)\) is an ideal that is closed under all endomorphisms of the algebra \(K(X)\). Substituting ``ideal'' for ``vector subspace'' in the above definition one gets the notion of T-space. In other words a vector subspace \(V\) of \(K(X)\) is a T-space if it is closed under substitutions of the variables. The T-ideals are exactly the ideals of identities of algebras while such description is missing in the case of T-spaces. The paper is divided into three main chapters. The first of them is devoted to the case of characteristic 0. The authors develop the machinery necessary to prove the main result in this situation, namely that every T-space has a finite system of generators. The second chapter studies the case when the base field is of characteristic 2, and recalls various constructions of infinitely based T-spaces. In the last chapter they construct such examples for any characteristic \(p>2\). Recall that some of the main results in this area had been available mostly in Russian and the present survey will make available lots of interesting results to the much larger mathematical community.