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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2025
Let ${\mathcal {A}}$ be a unital
${\mathbb {F}}$-algebra and let
${\mathcal {S}}$ be a generating set of
${\mathcal {A}}$. The length of
${\mathcal {S}}$ is the smallest number k such that
${\mathcal {A}}$ equals the
${\mathbb {F}}$-linear span of all products of length at most k of elements from
${\mathcal {S}}$. The length of
${\mathcal {A}}$, denoted by
$l({\mathcal {A}})$, is defined to be the maximal length of its generating sets. We show that
$l({\mathcal {A}})$ does not exceed the maximum of
$\dim {\mathcal {A}} / 2$ and
$m({\mathcal {A}})-1$, where
$m({\mathcal {A}})$ is the largest degree of the minimal polynomial among all elements of the algebra
${\mathcal {A}}$. As an application, we show that for arbitrary odd n, the length of the group algebra of the dihedral group of order
$2n$ equals n.
This research was supported by Russian Science Foundation, grant 20-11-20203.