The species and idempotents of the Green algebra of a finite group with a cyclic Sylow subgroup. (Q958523)

Let \(G\) be a finite group and \(k\) a field of positive characteristic \(p\) which contains the \(|G|\)-th roots of unity. The Green ring \(a(kG)\) is the free \(\mathbb{Z}\)-module generated by the isomorphism classes of indecomposable \(kG\)-modules, with the product defined by the tensor product over \(k\). Then the Green algebra of \(kG\) is the \(\mathbb{C}\)-algebra \(A(kG)=\mathbb{C}\otimes_\mathbb{Z} a(kG)\). It is well-known that this is a finite dimensional semi-simple algebra if and only if \(G\) contains a cyclic Sylow \(p\)-subgroup \(P\). Assuming that this is the case, the author calculates the species of \(A(kG)\), (i.e. the nonzero \(\mathbb{C}\)-algebra homomorphisms \(s\colon A(kG)\to\mathbb{C}\)) and gives a formula for the idempotents of \(A(kG)\). Note that a species is determined by its value on the primitive idempotents, and their number equals the number of isomorphism classes of indecomposable \(kG\)-modules. The author shows that the species of \(A(kG)\) are obtained from the species of \(A(kP)\), the species of the subalgebra \(A(kG,\text{Triv})\) generated by the indecomposable \(kG\)-modules with trivial source, and from the characters of the cyclic group \(N_G(P)/C_G(P)\).