Commutators in division rings revisited (Q5939032)

The paper under review gives an account of the author's main results on various aspects of the structure of associative division rings, published in the period of 1975-2000 (but mainly since 1995). They are supplemented by improvements and new contributions to the questions discussed. Let \(D\) be a division ring, \(Z(D)\) the centre of \(D\), \(D^*\) the multiplicative group of \(D\), \(D'\) the commutator subgroup of \(D^*\), and \([D,D]\) the additive commutator subgroup of \(D\). The main topics of the paper include the following: the cardinality of minimal generating sets of normal subgroups of \(D'\) (Theorem 2.39); commutativity theorems for \(D\) (the former part of Section 3); criteria for algebraicity of \(D\) and of the full matrix ring \(M_n(D)\) as algebras over \(Z(D)\) (Theorems 2.4, 5.15, 5.17 and Corollaries 5.14, 5.16); the existence of canonical isomorphisms between groups associated with \(D^*\) and with the multiplicative group \(\text{GL}_n(D)\) of \(M_n(D)\) (see Section 4 and the former part of Section 3). In addition, the author proves the normality of subgroups of \(\text{GL}_n(D)\) of finite index, and also the fact that noncentral subnormal subgroups of \(\text{GL}_n(D)\) contain the commutator subgroup when \(Z(D)\) is infinite. The paper concludes with a list of \(34\) open problems. Remark: It should be noted that the answer to Problem 2 in the author's list is affirmative (i.e. the centre of \(D'\) is a torsion group), provided that \(Z(D)\) is a noncountable field. Indeed, by a well-known theorem due to \textit{A. S. Amitsur} [see Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 7, 35-48 (1956; Zbl 0070.03004)], \(D\) is an algebra of linearly (or locally) bounded degree, so the assertion follows from Proposition 2.5 of the paper under review and Proposition 3.2 of the reviewer's paper [in J. Algebra 160, No. 2, 342-379 (1993; Zbl 0818.16019)].