On *-Clean Group Rings II

Abstract

A ring with involution * is called *-clean if each of its elements is the sum of a unit and a projection (*-invariant idempotent). Recently, Gao, Chen, and Li obtained necessary and sufficient conditions for RG to be *-clean, where R is a commutative local ring and G is one of C3, C4, S3, and Q8. Most recently, Li, Yuan, and Parmenter gave a complete characterization of when the group algebra FCp is *-clean, where F is a field and Cp is a cyclic group of prime order p. In this article, we extend the above mentioned result from FCp to FqCpk, where Fq is a finite field and Cpk is a cyclic group of an odd prime power order pk. For the general case when G = Cn is cyclic group of order n, we also provide a necessary condition and a few sufficient conditions for FqCn to be *-clean.