Singular Ideals over arbitrary fields for the two- and three-headed snakes

Abstract

We study the Steinberg algebra with coefficients in an arbitrary field K for the two- and three-headed snake groupoids, which are basic examples of non-Hausdorff groupoids. We are particularly interested in elements of this algebra that are no longer continuous, known as singular functions. We prove that the ideal of singular functions in the Steinberg algebra of the two-headed snake does not properly contain any non-zero ideal, regardless of the choice of the base field K. In the case of the three-headed snake, we prove that the ideal of singular functions of the Steinberg algebra properly contains non-zero ideals if, and only if, the base field K is a splitting field of x^2 + x + 1. In particular, there are always non-zero proper subset ideals when K has characteristic a prime not congruent to -1 mod 3.