Thesis (MSc)--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

Let R be a ring. We say x ∈ R is clean if x = e + u where u is a unit and e is an idempotent (e2 = e). R is clean if every element of R is clean. I will give the motivation for clean rings, which comes from Fitting's Lemma for Vector Spaces. This leads into the ABCD lemma, which is the foundation of a paper by Camillo, Khurana, Lam, Nicholson and Zhou. Semi-perfect rings are a well known type of ring. I will show a relationship that occurs between clean rings and semi-perfect rings which will allow me to utilize what is known already about semi-perfect rings. It is also important to note that I will be using the Fundamental Theorem of Torsion-free Modules over Principal Ideal Domains to work with finite dimensional vector spaces. These finite dimensional vector spaces are in fact strongly clean, which simply means they are clean and the idempotent and unit commute. This additionally means that since L = e + u, Le = eL. Several types of rings are clean, including a weaker version of commutative Von Neumann regular rings, Duo Von Neumann regular, which I have proved. The goal of my research is to find out how many ways to write matrices or other ring elements as sums of units and idempotents. To do this, I have come up with a method that is self contained, drawing from but not requiring the entire literature of Nicholson. We also examine sets other than idempotents such as upper-triangular and row reduced and examine the possibility or exclusion that an element may be represented as the sum of a upper-triangular (resp. row reduced) element and a unit. These and other element properties highlight some of the complexity of examining an additive property when the underlying properties are multiplicative.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Thesis (MSc (Mathematics))--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / An exposition is given of [12], a paper by N. Krupnik, which is a discussion of the minimum number of idempotent generators of a complete matrix algebra Mn(F) over a field F, as well as direct sums of complete matrix algebras over F. It will, for example, be proved that, if n ≥ 2, then the minimum number of idempotent generators of a n × n matrix algebra is equal to 2 or 3. Krupnik made an incorrect statement in ([12], Theorem 5), namely that the minimum number of idempotent generators of m copies of an infinite field F, as an algebra over F, is m−1. This error was identified and corrected by A.V. Kelarev, A.B. van der Merwe and L. van Wyk in [11]. The thesis also includes an exposition of this correction. Furthermore an exposition will be given of the main result of [5], where E. Formanek showed that, if n ≥ 2, then there is a non-vanishing central polynomial for Mn(F), with F any field. The last mentioned result will be used in the exposition of [12].

The descent algebra of a Coxeter group is a subalgebra of the group algebra with interesting representation theoretic properties. For instance, the natural map from the descent algebra of the symmetric group to the character ring is a surjective algebra homomorphism, so the descent algebra implicitly encodes information about the representations of the symmetric group. However, this property does not hold for other Coxeter groups. Moreover, a complete set of primitive idempotents in the descent algebra of the symmetric group leads to a decomposition of the group algebra as a direct sum of induced linear characters of centralizers of conjugacy class representatives. In this dissertation, I consider the hyperoctahedral group. When the descent algebra of a hyperoctahedral group is replaced with a generalization called the Mantaci-Reutenauer algebra, the natural map to the character ring is surjective. In 2008, Bonnafé asked whether a complete set of idempotents in the Mantaci-Reutenauer algebra could lead to a decomposition of the group algebra of the hyperoctahedral group as a direct sum of induced linear characters of centralizers. In this dissertation, I will answer this question positively and go through the construction of the idempotents, conjugacy class representatives, and linear characters required to do so.

Soit $p in N^*$. On définit une famille d'idempotents (et de nilpotents) des algèbres de Temperley-Lieb aux racines $4p$-ième de l'unité qui généralise les idempotents de Jones-Wenzl usuels. Ces nouveaux idempotents sont associés aux représentations simples et indécomposables projectives de dimension finie du groupe quantique restreint $Uq$, où $q$ est une racine $2p$-ième de l'unité. A l'instar de la théorie des champs quantique topologique (TQFT) de [BHMV95], ils fournissent une base canonique de classes d'écheveaux coloriés pour définir des représentations des groupes de difféotopie des surfaces. Dans le cas du tore, cette base nous permet d'obtenir une correspondance partielle entre les actions de la vrille négative et du bouclage, et la représentation de $SL_2(Z)$ de [LM94] induite sur le centre de $Uq$, qui étend non trivialement de la représentation de $SL_2(Z)$ obtenue par la TQFT de [RT91]. / Let $p in N^*$. We define a family of idempotents (and nilpotents) in the Temperley-Lieb algebras at $4p$-th roots of unity which generalizes the usual Jones-Wenzl idempotents. These new idempotents correspond to finite dimentional simple and projective indecomposable representations of the restricted quantum group $Uq$, where $q$ is a $2p$-th root of unity. In the manner of the [BHMV95] topological quantum field theorie (TQFT), they provide a canonical basis in colored skein modules to define mapping class groups representations. In the torus case, this basis allows us to obtain a partial match between the negative twist and the buckling actions, and the [LM94] induced representation of $SL_2(Z)$ on the center of $Uq$, which extends non trivially the [RT91] representation of $SL_2(Z)$.

Cyclic codes are a well-known class of linear block codes with efficient decoding algorithms. In recent years they have been generalized to skew-constacyclic codes; such a generalization has previously been shown to be useful. We begin with a study of skew-polynomial rings so that we may examine these codes algebraically as quotient modules of non-commutative skew-polynomial rings. We introduce a skew-generalized circulant matrix to aid in examining skew-constacyclic codes, and we use it to recover a well-known result on the duals of skew-constacyclic codes from Boucher/Ulmer in 2011. We also motivate and develop a notion of idempotent elements in these quotient modules. We are particularly concerned with the existence and uniqueness of idempotents that generate a given submodule; we generalize relevant results from previous work on skew-constacyclic codes by Gao/Shen/Fu in 2013 and well-known results from the classical case.

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