Stable Rationality and Cyclicity

Abstract

There are two outstanding questions about division algebras of prime degree $p$. The first is whether they are cyclic, or equivalently crossed products. The second is whether the center, $Z(F,p)$, of the generic division algebra $UD(F,p)$ is stably rational over $F$. When $F$ is characteristic 0 and contains a primitive $p$ root of one, we show that there is a connection between these two questions. Namely, we show that if $Z(F,p)$ is not stably rational then $UD(F,p)$ is not cyclic.