TITLE: What elements in a tensor algebra are invertible?
QUESTION [6 upvotes]: A question was brought up to me about if it is possible to come up with a module that has no non trivial invertible elements in its respective tensor algebra.  I am not sure if this is trivial based on the following fact but I thought it would be a good starting point:
Let $T(V) = \oplus_{k=0}^{\infty} T^k(V)$ be the tensor algebra of a finite vector space $V$.
How do you show the only invertible elements in $T(V)$ are nonzero scalars (0-tensors)?

REPLY [8 votes]: You can write every element as a sum of elements of individual spaces $T^k(V)$. If you multiply two non-scalar products written like that, the product of the elements of highest degrees can't cancel with anything else, so it would have to be zero for the entire product to be unity. That's not possible; hence there are no non-scalar invertible elements.