Clean group rings over localizations of rings of integers (1911.04713v1)

Abstract: A ring $R$ is said to be clean if each element of $R$ can be written as the sum of a unit and an idempotent. In a recent article (J. Algebra, 405 (2014), 168-178), Immormino and McGoven characterized when the group ring $\mathbb Z_{(p)}[C_n]$ is clean, where $\mathbb Z_{(p)}$ is the localization of the integers at the prime $p$. In this paper, we consider a more general setting. Let $K$ be an algebraic number field, $\mathcal O_K$ be its ring of integers, and $R$ be a localization of $\mathcal O_K$ at some prime ideal. We investigate when $R[G]$ is clean, where $G$ is a finite abelian group, and obtain a complete characterization for such a group ring to be clean for the case when $K=\mathbb Q(\zeta_n)$ is a cyclotomic field or $K=\mathbb Q(\sqrt{d})$ is a quadratic field.