A non-extended hermitian form over ℤ[ℤ

Abstract

We describe a nonsingular hermitian form of rank 4 over the group ring Z[Z] which is not extended from the integers. Moreover, we show that under certain indefiniteness asumptions, every nonsingular hermitian form on a free Z[Z]module is extended from the integers. As a corollary, there exists a closed oriented 4-dimensional manifold with fundamental group Z which is not the connected sum of S × S with a simply-connected 4-manifold.