Paper detail

Relative centralisers of relative subgroups

Let $R$ be an associative ring with 1, $G=GL(n, R)$ be the general linear group of degree $n\ge 3$ over $R$. In this paper we calculate the relative centralisers of the relative elementary subgroups or the principal congruence subgroups, corresponding to an ideal $A\unlhd R$ modulo the relative elementary subgroups or the principal congruence subgroups, corresponding to another ideal $B\unlhd R$. Modulo congruence subgroups the results are essentially easy exercises in linear algebra. But modulo the elementary subgroups they turned out to be quite tricky, and we could get definitive answers only over commutative rings, or, in some cases, only over Dedekind rings. We discuss also some further related problems, such as the interrelations of various birelative commutator subgroups, etc., and state several unsolved questions.