How many units can a commutative ring have?

Abstract

Laszlo Fuchs posed the following problem in 1960, which remains open: classify the abelian groups occurring as the group of all units in a commutative ring. In this note, we provide an elementary solution to a simpler, related problem: find all cardinal numbers occurring as the cardinality of the group of all units in a commutative ring. As a by-product, we obtain a solution to Fuchs' problem for the class of finite abelian $p$-groups when $p$ is an odd prime.

6 pages, to appear in Amer. Math. Monthly