The automorphism group and the Picard group of a monomial algebra^* (Q4237124)

In previous work, the authors have shown that the Picard group of a basic finite-dimensional split algebra \(A\) over an algebraically closed field of characteristic \(0\) may essentially be computed through the normal subgroup of finite index \(H_A/H_A\cap\text{Inn}(A)\) and the corresponding finite quotient. Here, \(H_A\) consists of all \(\varphi\in\Aut(A)\), which reduce to the identity on \(B\), where \(B\) is the complement of the Jacobson radical \(J\) in the Wedderburn-Malcev decomposition of \(A\) and \(\text{Inn}(A)\) denotes the group of inner automorphisms of \(A\). While this is in theory a very effective recipe, it appears that in practice one still has to calculate ``example by example'', implying that no genuine general approach is available at the moment. On the other hand, one may wish for such a general approach within sufficiently nice, broad and well-defined subclasses of algebras. In the present paper the authors concentrate on such a class: the case of monomial algebras \(A\) with acyclic quiver. For this class of algebras the authors' methods appear to work perfectly well, making use, moreover, of techniques basically stemming from the theory of algebraic groups.