Symbol \(p\)-algebras of prime degree and their \(p\)-central subspaces (Q517464)

Let \(F\) be a field of prime characteristic \(p\). It is well known (due to Albert and Teichmüller) that every associative central simple \(F\)-algebra of exponent \(p\) is Brauer equivalent to a tensor product of cyclic division \(F\)-algebras of degree \(p\). Also, it follows from the Artin-Schreier theorem that cyclic division algebras of degree \(p\) over \(F\) are symbol \(p\)-algebras. By a symbol \(p\)-algebra of degree \(p\), we mean an \(F\)-algebra \(A := [\alpha , \beta )_ {p,F}\) of the form \(A = \langle x, y: \;x ^ - x = \alpha , y ^ p = \beta , yxy ^ {-1} = x + 1\rangle \), for some \(\alpha \in F\) and \(\beta \in F ^ {\ast }\). An element \(z \in A\) is said to be \(p\)-central, if \(z ^ p \in F\). It is known that if \(z\) is \(p\)-central and is not central, then \(A = [\gamma , z ^{p})\), for some \(\gamma \in F\). Thus \(p\)-central noncentral elements are important for understanding the different presentations of \(A\) as a symbol \(p\)-algebra. An \(F\)-vector subspace of \(A\) consisting only of \(p\)-central elements is called a \(p\)-central subspace. An example of such a subspace of \(A\) is given by the span \(V\) over \(F\) of the elements \(x ^{j}y\), \(j = 1, \dots , p - 1\). It is easy to prove that the \(F\)-dimension of \(V\) is equal to \(p - 1\). The paper under review deals with the study of \(p\)-central subspaces of \(A\). The authors are mainly interested in their maximal dimension. They conjecture that this dimension is \(p + 1\). The main result of the paper states that the conjecture is true, for \([\alpha , \beta )_ {p,F}\), if \(F\) possesses a subfield \(K\), and one of the following two conditions holds: (i) \(F = K(\alpha , \beta )\) and the elements \(\alpha \) and \(\beta \) are algebraically independent over \(K\); (ii) \(F\) is the iterated formal Laurent power series field \(K((\alpha ^ {-1}))((\beta ^ {-1}))\). The authors deduce this main theorem, by proving the following fact: if \(s _ 1, \dots , s _ {p+1}\) are \(p + 1\) pairwise distinct nonzero elements of the additive group \(G = (\mathbb Z/p\mathbb Z) \oplus (\mathbb Z/p\mathbb Z)\), then every nonzero element \(g \in G\) can be expressed as \(d _ 1s _ 1 + \dots + d _ {p+1}s _{p+1}\), for some non-negative integers \(d _ 1, \dots , d _ {p+1}\) with \(\sum _ {i=1} ^ {p+1} d _ i \leq p - 1\).