Injectivity and surjectivity of the Dress map (Q2630018)

Let \(k\) be a field of characteristic not \(2\), and let \(L/k\) be a finite Galois extension with Galois group \(G\). \textit{J. Heller} and \textit{K. Ormsby} [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 368, No. 11, 8047--8077 (2016; Zbl 1346.14049)] constructed a strong symmetric monoidal triangulated functor \(c_{L/k}^*: \text{SH}_G\to \text{SH}_k\) from the stable \(G\)-equivariant homotopy category to the stable motivic homotopy category over \(k\). The unit objects in these categories are the Burnside ring \(A(G)\) and the Grothendieck-Witt ring \(GW(k)\), repectively. The functor \(c_{L/k}^*\) induces a homomorphism between the endomorphism rings of these unit functors, and Heller and Ormsby [loc. cit.] show that this homomorphism is in fact the map \(h_{L/k}: A(G)\to GW(k)\) as defined by \textit{A. W. M. Dress} [Notes on the theory of representations of finite groups. Part I: The Burnside ring of a finite group and some AGN-applications. Universität Bielefeld, Fakultät für Mathematik (1971; Zbl 0241.20042)]. The first theorem in the present paper states that \(h_{L/k}\) is injective if and only if \(L=k\) or \(L=k(\sqrt{\alpha})\) with \(\alpha\) not a sum of squares in \(k\). As a corollary, one obtains that for \(c_{L/k}^*\) to be faithful, \(L/k\) must be of that shape. The second theorem states that \(h_{L/k}\) is surjective if and only if \(k\) is quadratically closed in \(L\), which therefore becomes a necessary condition for \(c_{L/k}^*\) to be full. As a consequence, one readily recovers the result by Heller and Ormsby [loc. cit.] that \(h_{L/k}\) is an isomorphism if and only if either \(k\) is quadratically closed and \(L=k\), or \(k\) is Euclidean and \(L=k(\sqrt{-1})\).