Krull-Schmidt decompositions for thick subcategories

Following Krause \cite{Kr}, we prove Krull-Schmidt type decomposition theorems for thick subcategories of various triangulated categories including the derived categories of rings, Noetherian stable homotopy categories, stable module categories over Hopf algebras, and the stable homotopy category of spectra. In all these categories, it is shown that the thick ideals of small objects decompose uniquely into indecomposable thick ideals. We also discuss some consequences of these decomposition results. In particular, it is shown that all these decompositions respect K-theory.Comment: Added more references, fixed some typos, to appear in Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra, 22 pages, 1 figur

What is special about the divisors of 24?

What is an interesting number theoretic or a combinatorial characterization of the divisors of 24 amongst all positive integers? In this paper I will provide one characterization in terms of modular multiplication tables. This idea evolved interestingly from a question raised by a student in my elementary number theory class. I will give the characterization and then provide 5 proofs using various techniques: Chinese remainder theorem, structure theory of units, Dirichlet's theorem on primes in an arithmetic progression, Bertrand-Chebyshev theorem, and results of Erdos and Ramanujan on the pi(x) function.Comment: 7 pages, to appear in Math. Ma

Fuchs' problem for indecomposable abelian groups

More than 50 years ago, Laszlo Fuchs asked which abelian groups can be the group of units of a commutative ring. Though progress has been made, the question remains open. We provide an answer to this question in the case of indecomposable abelian groups by classifying the indecomposable abelian groups that are realizable as the group of units of a ring of any given characteristic.Comment: 10 pages, accepted for publication in Journal of Algebr