On the Structure of Witt-Burnside Rings Attached to Pro-p Groups

The $p$-typical Witt vectors are a ubiquitous object in algebra and number theory. They arise as a functorial construction that takes perfect fields $k$ of prime characteristic $p > 0$ to $p$-adically complete discrete valuation rings of characteristic 0 with residue field $k$ and are universal in that sense. A. Dress and C. Siebeneicher generalized this construction by producing a functor $\W_G$ attached to any profinite group $G$. The $p$-typical Witt vectors arise as those attached to the $p$-adic integers. Here we examine the ring structure of $\W_G(k)$ for several examples of pro-$p$ groups $G$ and fields $k$ of characteristic $p$. We will show that the structure is surprisingly more complicated than the $p$-typical case.

2010 Mathematics Subject Classification:

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