Outer partial actions and partial skew group rings

Abstract: We extend the classicial notion of an outer action $\alpha$ of a group $G$ on a unital ring $A$ to the case when $\alpha$ is a partial action on ideals, all of which have local units. We show that if $\alpha$ is an outer partial action of an abelian group $G$, then its associated partial skew group ring $A \star_\alpha G$ is simple if and only if $A$ is $G$-simple. This result is applied to partial skew group rings associated with two different types of partial dynamical systems.