On the Kurosh problem for algebras over a general field

Abstract

Smoktunowicz, Lenagan, and the second-named author recently gave an example of a nil algebra of Gelfand-Kirillov dimension at most three. Their construction requires a countable base field, however. We show that for any field $k$ and any monotonically increasing function $f(n)$ which grows super-polynomially but subexponentially there exists an infinite-dimensional finitely generated nil $k$-algebra whose growth is asymptotically bounded by $f(n)$. This construction gives the first examples of nil algebras of subexponential growth over uncountable fields.