More on the Schur group of a commutative ring

Abstract

The Schur group of a commutative ring, R, with identity consists of all classes in the Brauer group of R which contain a homomorphic image of a group ring RG for some finite group G. It is the purpose of this article to continue an investigation of this group which was introduced in earler work as a natural generalization of the Schur group of a field. We generalize certain facts pertaining to the latter, among which are results on extensions of automorphisms and decomposition of central simple algebras into a product of cyclics. Finally we introduce the Schur exponent of a ring which equals the well-known Schur index in the global or local field case.

Keywords

• Schur index
• group ring
• automorphism.