Free relations for matrix invariants in the modular case (Q659880)

A group \(G\) of \(n\times n\) matrices with entries in an infinite field \(\mathbb{F}\) acts on \(\mathbb{F}^{n\times n}\) by conjugation; by extension \(G\) acts on \(V=(\mathbb{F}^{n\times n})^{d}\) by diagonal conjugation for some fixed \(d\). Let \(R\) be the coordinate algebra of \(V\), and \(R^{G}\) the algebra of matrix \(G\)-invariants. Let \(\mathcal{M}\) be the monoid which is freely generated by the letters \(x_{1},\dots,x_{d}\) if \(G=\text{GL}(n),\) and by \(x_{1},\dots,x_{d},x_{1} ^{T},\dots,x_{d}^{T}\) otherwise. Let \(\mathcal{N}_{\sigma}\) be the ring freely generated by the symbols \(\sigma_{t}(a)\) for \(t>0\) and \(a\in\mathcal{M}\) ranges through equivalence classes of primitive elements (that is, not a power of a shorter monomial). For each \(n\) there is a map \(\psi_{n}:\mathcal{N}_{\sigma}\rightarrow R^{G}\) which maps \(\sigma_{t}(a)\) to the \(t^{\text{th}}\) coefficient of the characteristic polynomial of a matrix \(X_{a}\) which depends on \(a\), for \(t\leq n;\) otherwise, \(\sigma_{t}(a)\) is sent to zero. Let \(K_{\infty}=\cap\ker \psi_{n}.\) Then \(K_{\infty}\) is called the ideal of free relations. The main result of this paper is that \(K_{\infty}\) is zero in the cases where \(G=O(n)\) and \(G=Sp(n)\), the latter case assuming \(\mathbb{F}\) does not have characteristic \(2\). Indeed, if char \(\mathbb{F}=2\) the authors conjecture that \(R^{Sp(n)}\) has an ideal of free relations generated by \(\sigma_{t}(a),\) \(t\) odd, where \(a\) is cyclic equivalent to \(a^{T},\) an involution of \(a\). Of course, \(K_{\infty}\) being zero does not imply that \(K_{n}=\ker\psi_{n}\) is zero for all \(n\). In fact, a complete set of generators for the ideal of relations \(K_{n}\) for \(R^{O(n)}\) is given.