A ghost ring for the left-free double Burnside ring and an application to fusion systems (Q664755)

The double Burnside ring \(B(G,G)\) of a finite group \(G\) is the Grothendieck ring of the category of finite \((G,G)\)-bisets. It contains the subrings \(B^{\vartriangleleft}(G,G)\) and \(B^{\Delta}(G,G)\) generated by the isomorphism classes of left-free and bifree \((G,G)\)-bisets. In the paper under review, the authors define a ghost ring \(\tilde{B}^{\vartriangleleft}(G,G)\) of \(B^{\vartriangleleft}(G,G)\), and an embedding \(B^{\vartriangleleft}(G,G) \longrightarrow \tilde{B}^{\vartriangleleft}(G,G)\) with finite cokernel. The ghost ring \(\tilde{B}^{\vartriangleleft}(G,G)\) has a more transparent structure than the double Burnside ring \(B(G,G)\), and after tensoring with \(\mathbb{Q}\) one obtains an isomorphism \(\mathbb{Q} {B}^{\vartriangleleft}(G,G) \longrightarrow \mathbb{Q}\tilde{B}^{\vartriangleleft}(G,G)\). Moreover, one has a decomposition \(\mathbb{Q} {B}^{\vartriangleleft}(G,G) = \mathbb{Q}{B}^{\Delta}(G,G) \oplus J(B^{\vartriangleleft}(G,G))\) where the first summand is semisimple and the second denotes the Jacobson radical. Thus inflation induces a bijection between the isomorphism classes of simple \(\mathbb{Q} {B}^{\Delta}(G,G)\)-modules and the isomorphism classes of simple \(\mathbb{Q} {B}^{\vartriangleleft}(G,G)\)-modules. Using ideas of Bouc, the authors show that the isomorphism classes of simple \(\mathbb{Q} {B}^{\Delta}(G,G)\)-modules can be parametrized by (isomorphism classes of) pairs \((H,M)\) where \(H\) is a subgroup of \(G\) and \(M\) is a simple \(\mathbb{Q} \text{Out}(H)\)-module. In the last section of their paper, the authors construct, for a prime number \(p\), a bijection between the set of fusion systems on a finite \(p\)-group \(G\) and a set of idempotents in \(\mathbb{Q} {B}^{\Delta}(G,G)\); this extends work of Stancu and Ragnarsson. The authors also point out that some of their results generalize to categories of biset functors.