A ghost ring for the left-free double Burnside ring and an application to fusion systems

For a finite group $G$, we define a ghost ring and a mark homomorphism for the double Burnside ring of left-free $(G,G)$-bisets. In analogy to the case of the Burnside ring $B(G)$, the ghost ring has a much simpler ring structure, and after tensoring with $\QQ$ one obtains an isomorphism of $\QQ$-algebras. As an application of a key lemma, we obtain a very general formula for the Brauer construction applied to a tensor product of two $p$-permutation bimodules $M$ and $N$ in terms of Brauer constructions of the bimodules $M$ and $N$. Over a field of characteristic 0 we determine the simple modules of the left-free double Burnside algebra and prove semisimplicity results for the bifree double Burnside algebra. These results carry over to results about biset-functor categories. Finally, we apply the ghost ring and mark homomorphism to fusion systems on a finite $p$-group. We extend a remarkable bijection, due to Ragnarsson and Stancu, between saturated fusion systems and certain idempotents of the bifree double Burnside algebra over $\ZZ_{(p)}$, to a bijection between all fusion systems and a larger set of idempotents in the bifree double Burnside algebra over $\QQ.$