representation ring vs burnside ring
Let be a finite group![]()
and let be any field. If is a -set, then we may consider the vector space over which has as a basis. In this manner becomes a representation of via action induced from and linearly extended to . It can be shown that only depends on the isomorphism class of , so we have a well-defined mapping:
which can be easily extended to the function
where on the left side we have the Burnside ring and on the right side the representation ring![]()
. It can be shown, that is actually a ring homomorphism
![]()
, but in most cases it neither injective
nor surjective
. But the following theorem
![]()
due to Segal gives us some properties of :
Theorem (Segal). Let be defined as above with rationals as the underlying field. If is a -group for some prime number , then is surjective. Furthermore is an isomorphism if and only if is cyclic.