TORSION-FREE RINGS WITH FINITE AUTOMORPHISM GROUPS (Q2749037)

The rings under consideration are nonzero associative torsion-free rings \(R\) whose rational algebra \(R^\mathbb{Q}=R\otimes_\mathbb{Z}\mathbb{Q}\) is a finite-dimensional algebra over \(\mathbb{Q}\). The primary result in this work is a characterization of rings of this type when their automorphism groups, \(\Aut R\), are finite. Interest in such rings was brought about by studying rigid rings which have trivial automorphism groups. The main result is as follows: Let \(B\) be a non-zero ring. The group \(\Aut B\) is finite if and only if \(B\) is quasi-isomorphic to a finite direct sum of rings \(R_i\), each of which satisfies one of the following: (a) \(R_i^\mathbb{Q}\) is a field; (b) \(R_i^\mathbb{Q}\) is a generalized quaternion skew-field over a field and the normalizer of \(R_i\) in \(R_i^\mathbb{Q}\) has only finitely many reduced quaternions; (c) \(R_i=S_i(A_i)\) is an idealization of a unitary \(S_i\)-module \(A_i\), where \(A_i\) is a finite rank torsion-free group, \(S_i^\mathbb{Q}=\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{-d_i})\), and as a \(\mathbb{Z}[\sqrt{-d_i}]\)-module, \(A_i\) has a finite automorphism group. -- The author also gives non-trivial examples of rings with finite automorphism groups.