Applications of Swan's Bertini theorem to unimodular rows (Q6051109)

This paper under review deals with the nice group structure on the elementary orbit space of unimodular rows. Let R be a commutative Noetherian \(d\)-dimensional ring with \(1\). Let \(\mathrm{Um}_n(R)\) denote the set of unimodular rows of length \(n\) in a ring \(R\)., and \(\mathrm{E}_n(R)\) denote the normal subgroup of \(\mathrm{GL}_n(R)\) generated by elementary matrices. In 1983, W. van der Kallen introduced a group structure to the orbit space \(\mathrm{Um}_{d+1}(R)/\mathrm{E}_{d+1}(R)\) for \(n\ge 2\). The product formula is said to be \textit{nice} if it satisfies \[ [x_1,v_2,\ldots,v_n]*[v_1,v_2,\ldots,v_n]=[x_1v_1,v_2,\ldots,v_n]. \] In this paper, the authors considered affine algebra \(R\) of dimension \(d\ge 4\) over a perfect field \(k\) of characteristic different from \(2\). Let \(MS_n(R)\) denote the universal Mennicke \(n\)-symbol. Using Swan's Bertini theorem, the authors proved : \(MS_{d+1}(R)\) is uniquely divisible prime to char \(k\) if \(R\) is reduced and \(k\) is infinite with c.d. \((k)\le 1\). This is a generalization of Fasel's result. For an ideal \(I\subset R\) in \(R\), they have proved the following results for relative groups: (1) \(\mathrm{Um}_{d+1}(R,I)/\mathrm{E}_{d+1}(R,I)\) has nice group structure if c.d. \((k)\le 2\). (2) \(\mathrm{Um}_{d}(R)/\mathrm{E}_{d}(R)\) has nice group structure if k is algebraically closed of char \(k\ne 2, 3\) and either \(k=\overline{\mathbb{F}}_p\) or \(R\) is normal.