Phantom maps and purity in modular representation theory, I
Let k be a field and G a finite group. By analogy with the theory of phantom maps in topology, a map f : M → ℕ between kG-modules is said to be phantom if its restriction to every finitely generated submodule of M factors through a projective module. We investigate the relationships between the theory of phantom maps, the algebraic theory of purity, and Rickard's idempotent modules. In general, adding one to the pure global dimension of kG gives an upper bound for the number of phantoms we need...