Involutions and Anticommutativity in Group Rings

http://dx.doi.org/10.4153/CMB-2011-178-2
Canad. Math. Bull. 56(2013), 344-353

  Published:2011-09-15
 Printed: Jun 2013

Let $g\mapsto g^*$ denote an involution on a group $G$. For any (commutative, associative) ring $R$ (with $1$), $*$ extends linearly to an involution of the group ring $RG$. An element $\alpha\in RG$ is symmetric if $\alpha^*=\alpha$ and skew-symmetric if $\alpha^*=-\alpha$. The skew-symmetric elements are closed under the Lie bracket, $[\alpha,\beta]=\alpha\beta-\beta\alpha$. In this paper, we investigate when this set is also closed under the ring product in $RG$. The symmetric elements are closed under the Jordan product, $\alpha\circ\beta=\alpha\beta+\beta\alpha$. Here, we determine when this product is trivial. These two problems are analogues of problems about the skew-symmetric and symmetric elements in group rings that have received a lot of attention.