TITLE: Isomorphism of group rings over finite cyclic groups
QUESTION [8 upvotes]: Let $R$ be a commutative ring with unity. For any group $G$, let the group ring be denoted by $R[G]$. If $R[\mathbb Z/(n) ] \cong R [\mathbb Z / (m)]$ as rings , then is it true that $m=n$ ? If that is not true in general, then is it true if we put some extra condition on $R$, like say Noetherian ?

REPLY [4 votes]: Suppose that $R$ has all $n^{th}$ roots of unity and that $n$ is invertible in $R$: for example, this holds if $R$ is a $\mathbb{C}$-algebra. Then you can show that
$$R[C_n] \cong R^n$$
as $R$-algebras, so the problem reduces to asking whether $R^n \cong R^m$ implies $n = m$. 
The answer is yes if $\text{Spec } R$ has finitely many connected components, or equivalently if $R$ has finitely many idempotents, which is in particular the case if $R$ is either Noetherian or an integral domain, since then we can just count connected components (or idempotents) on both sides. It is no in general since, for example, we could have $R \cong k^{\mathbb{N}}$ for some other commutative ring $k$ satisfying the above conditions (and then $\text{Spec } R$ has infinitely many connected components). 
More generally, the answer is yes if you can find any other commutative ring $S$ such that there are at least two but at most finitely many homomorphisms $S \to R$ (for idempotents take $S = \mathbb{Z}[x]/(x^2 - x) \cong \mathbb{Z}^2$, the free commutative ring on an idempotent), since then $R^n \cong R^m$ implies
$$\text{Hom}(S, R^n) \cong \text{Hom}(S, R)^n \cong \text{Hom}(S, R^m) \cong \text{Hom}(S, R)^m.$$