It is becoming increasingly clear that the supercharacter theory of the finite group of unipotent upper-triangular matrices has a rich combinatorial structure built on set-partitions that is analogous to the partition combinatorics of the classical representation theory of the symmetric group. This paper begins by exploring a connection to the ring of symmetric functions in non-commuting variables that mirrors the symmetric group's relationship with the ring of symmetric functions. It then also investigates some of the representation theoretic structure constants arising from the restriction, tensor products and superinduction of supercharacters in this context.
Let $U_n$ denote the group of $n\times n$ unipotent upper-triangular matrices over a fixed finite field $\FF_q$, and let $U_\cP$ denote the pattern subgroup of $U_n$ corresponding to the poset $\cP$. This work examines the superclasses and supercharacters, as defined by Diaconis and Isaacs, of the family of normal pattern subgroups of $U_n$. After classifying all such subgroups, we describe an indexing set for their superclasses and supercharacters given by set partitions with some auxiliary data. We go on to establish a canonical bijection between the supercharacters of $U_\cP$ and certain $\…
We provide a Hopf algebra structure on the space of superclass functions on the unipotent upper triangular group of type D over a finite field based on a supercharacter theory constructed by André and Neto. Also, we make further comments with respect to types B and C. Type A was explores by M. Aguiar et. al (2010), thus this paper is a contribution to understand combinatorially the supercharacter theory of the other classical Lie types.
C. Andre and N. Yan introduced the idea of a supercharacter theory to give a tractable substitute for character theory in wild groups such as the unipotent uppertriangular group $U_n(F_q)$. In this theory superclasses are certain unions of conjugacy classes, and supercharacters are a set of characters which are constant on superclasses. This paper gives a character formula for a supercharacter evaluated at a superclass for pattern groups and more generally for algebra groups.
We construct supercharacter theories of finite unipotent groups in the orthogonal, symplectic and unitary types. Our method utilizes group actions in a manner analogous to that of Diaconis and Isaacs in their construction of supercharacters of algebra groups. The resulting supercharacter theories agree with those of André and Neto in the case of the unipotent orthogonal and symplectic matrices and generalize to a large collection of subgroups. In the unitary group case, we describe the supercharacters and superclasses in terms of labeled set partitions and calculate the supercharacter table.
We define the superclasses for a classical finite unipotent group $U$ of type $B_{n}(q)$, $C_{n}(q)$, or $D_{n}(q)$, and show that, together with the supercharacters defined in a previous paper, they form a supercharacter theory. In particular, we prove that the supercharacters take a constant value on each superclass, and evaluate this value. As a consequence, we obtain a factorization of any superclass as a product of elementary superclasses. In addition, we also define the space of superclass functions, and prove that it is spanned by the supercharacters. As as consequence, we (re)obtain th…
Even with the introduction of supercharacter theories, the representation theory of many unipotent groups remains mysterious. This paper constructs a family of supercharacter theories for normal pattern groups in a way that exhibit many of the combinatorial properties of the set partition combinatorics of the full uni-triangular groups, including combinatorial indexing sets, dimensions, and computable character formulas. Associated with these supercharacter theories is also a family of polytopes whose integer lattice points give the theories geometric underpinnings.
We construct supercharacter theories for a collection of unipotent matrix groups and produce a Hopf monoid from the supercharacters. These supercharacter theories are coarser than those defined by Diaconis--Isaacs for algebra groups and have supercharacters and superclasses indexed by nonnesting labeled set partitions. We compute the supercharacter tables and describe the product and coproduct of the Hopf monoid combinatorially. We also show that this Hopf monoid is free.
It is generally believed (and for the most part is probably true) that Lie theory, in contrast to the characteristic zero case, is insufficient to tackle the representation theory of algebraic groups over prime characteristic fields. However, in this paper we show that, for a large and important class of unipotent algebraic groups (namely the unipotent upper triangular groups $U_n$), and under a certain hypothesis relating the characteristic $p$ to both $n$ and the dimension $d$ of a representation (specifically, $p \geq \text{max}(n,2d)$), Lie theory is completely sufficient to determine the …
Suppose $G$ is a real reductive group. The determination of the irreducible unitary representations of $G$ is one of the major unsolved problem in representation theory. There is evidence to suggest that every irreducible unitary representation of $G$ can be constructed through a sequence of well-understood operations from a finite set of building blocks, called the unipotent representations. These representations are `attached' (in a certain mysterious sense) to the nilpotent orbits of $G$ on the dual space of its Lie algebra. Inside this finite set is a still smaller set, consisting of the u…
The notion of the supercharacter theory was introduced by P.Diaconis and I.M.Isaaks in 2008. In this paper we review the main statements of the general theory, we observe the construction of supercharacter theory for algebra groups and the theory of basic characters for the unitriangular groups over the finite field. Basing on the previous papers of the author, we construct the supercharacter theory for the finite groups of triangular type. We characterize the structure of Hopf algebra of supercharacters for the triangular group over the finite field.
We construct a supercharacter theory for the group of invertible elements of a reduced algebra. For the case of the triangular group, we obtain the formula for values of supercharacters on superclasses.
The method of little groups describes the irreducible characters of semidirect products with abelian normal subgroups in terms of the irreducible characters of the factor groups. We modify this method to construct supercharacter theories of semidirect products with abelian normal subgroups. In particular, we apply this construction to reproduce known supercharacter theories of several families of unipotent groups. We also utilize our method to construct a collection of new supercharacter theories of the unipotent upper-triangular matrices.
Denote by $N \subset SL_k$ the subgroup of unipotent upper triangular matrices. In this paper, we show that the dual canonical basis of $\mathbb{C}[N]$ (and base affine spaces) can be parameterized by semi-standard Young tableaux. Moreover, we give an explicit formula for every element in the the dual canonical basis using the data of the corresponding semistandard Young tableau. We apply our results to study cluster variables in $\mathbb{C}[N]$.
It is well-known that the representation theory of the finite group of unipotent upper-triangular matrices $U_n$ over a finite field is a wild problem. By instead considering approximately irreducible representations (supercharacters), one obtains a rich combinatorial theory analogous to that of the symmetric group, where we replace partition combinatorics with set-partitions. This paper studies the supercharacter theory of a family of subgroups that interpolate between $U_{n-1}$ and $U_n$. We supply several combinatorial indexing sets for the supercharacters, supercharacter formulas for these…
We give an $AB$-factorization of the supercharacter table of the group of $n\times n$ unipotent upper triangular matrices over $\FF_q$, where $A$ is a lower-triangular matrix with entries in $\ZZ[q]$ and $B$ is a unipotent upper-triangular matrix with entries in $\ZZ[q^{-1}]$. To this end we introduce a $q$ deformation of a new power-sum basis of the Hopf algebra of symmetric functions in noncommutative variables. The factorization is obtain from the transition matrices between the supercharacter basis, the $q$-power-sum basis and the superclass basis. This is similar to the decomposition of t…
The general linear group GL(n, K) over a field K contains a particularly prominent subgroup U(n, K), consisting of all the upper triangular unipotent elements. In this paper we are interested in the case when K is the finite field F_q, and our goal is to better understand the representation theory of U(n, F_q). The complete classification of the complex irreducible representations of this group has long been known to be a difficult task. The orbit method of Kirillov, famous for its success when K has characteristic 0, is a natural source of intuition and conjectures, but in our case the relati…
We compare two important bases of an irreducible representation of the symmetric group: the web basis and the Specht basis. The web basis has its roots in the Temperley-Lieb algebra and knot-theoretic considerations. The Specht basis is a classic algebraic and combinatorial construction of symmetric group representations which arises in this context through the geometry of varieties called Springer fibers. We describe a graph that encapsulates combinatorial relations between each of these bases, prove that there is a unique way (up to scaling) to map the Specht basis into the web representatio…
Let $A$ be a ring with $1\neq 0$, not necessarily finite, endowed with an involution~$*$, that is, an anti-automorphism of order $\leq 2$. Let $H_n(A)$ be the additive group of all $n\times n$ hermitian matrices over $A$ relative to $*$. Let ${\mathcal U}_n(A)$ be the subgroup of $\mathrm{GL}_n(A)$ of all upper triangular matrices with 1's along the main diagonal. Let $P=H_n(A)\rtimes {\mathcal U}_n(A)$, where ${\mathcal U}_n(A)$ acts on $H_n(A)$ by $*$-congruence transformations. We may view $P$ as a unipotent subgroup of either a symplectic group $\mathrm{Sp}_{2n}(A)$, if $*=1_A$ (in which c…
Diaconis and Isaacs define a supercharacter theory for algebra groups over a finite field by constructing certain unions of conjugacy classes called superclasses and certain reducible characters called supercharacters. This work investigates the properties of algebra subgroups $H\subset G$ which are unions of some set of the superclasses of $G$; we call such subgroups supernormal. After giving a few useful equivalent formulations of this definition, we show that products of supernormal subgroups are supernormal and that all normal pattern subgroups are supernormal. We then classify the set of …
Schur-Weyl duality is a fundamental framework in combinatorial representation theory. It intimately relates the irreducible representations of a group to the irreducible representations of its centralizer algebra. We investigate the analog of Schur-Weyl duality for the group of unipotent upper triangular matrices over a finite field. In this case, the character theory of these upper triangular matrices is "wild" or unattainable. Thus we employ a generalization, known as supercharacter theory, that creates a striking variation on the character theory of the symmetric group with combinatorics bu…
In a previous paper I have defined a new basis for the representation ring of a Weyl group. In this paper we show that the new basis is related to the standard basis by an upper triangular unipotent matrix. We also give a new parametrization of representations in a fixed family by certain pairs of subgroups of a finite group attached to the family. We outline an extension to the case of unipotent representations of a finite Chevalley group.
Let $R$ be a (not necessarily commutative) ring whose additive group is finitely generated and let $U_n(R) \subset GL_n(R)$ be the group of upper-triangular unipotent matrices over $R$. We study how the homology groups of $U_n(R)$ vary with $n$ from the point of view of representation stability. Our main theorem asserts that if for each $n$ we have representations $M_n$ of $U_n(R)$ over a ring $\mathbf{k}$ that are appropriately compatible and satisfy suitable finiteness hypotheses, then the rule $[n] \mapsto \widetilde{H}_i(U_n(R),M_n)$ defines a finitely generated OI-module. As a consequence…
A unipotent triangular relationship is established between the dual standard monomial theoretic basis and canonical basis for the negative part of the quantized universal enveloping algebra of type A.
This paper constructs a novel Hopf algebra $\mathsf{cf}(\mathrm{UT}_{\bullet})$ on the class functions of the unipotent upper triangular groups $\mathrm{UT}_{n}(\mathbb{F}_{q})$ over a finite field. This construction is representation theoretic in nature and uses the machinery of Hopf monoids in the category of vector species. In contrast with a similar known construction, this Hopf algebra has the property that induction to the finite general linear group induces a homomorphism to Zelevinsky's Hopf algebra of $\mathrm{GL}_{n}(\mathbb{F}_{q})$ class functions. Furthermore, $\mathsf{cf}(\mathrm…
The maximal subgroup of unipotent upper-triangular matrices of the finite general linear groups are a fundamental family of $p$-groups. Their representation theory is well-known to be wild, but there is a standard supercharacter theory, replacing irreducible representations by super-representations, that gives us some control over its representation theory. While this theory has a beautiful underlying combinatorics built on set partitions, the structure constants of restricted super-representations remain mysterious. This paper proposes a new approach to solving the restriction problem by cons…
The standard supercharacter theory of the finite unipotent upper-triangular matrices $U_n(q)$ gives rise to a beautiful combinatorics based on set partitions. As with the representation theory of the symmetric group, embeddings of $U_m(q)\subseteq U_n(q)$ for $m\leq n$ lead to branching rules. Diaconis and Isaacs established that the restriction of a supercharacter of $U_n(q)$ is a nonnegative integer linear combination of supercharacters of $U_m(q)$ (in fact, it is polynomial in $q$). In a first step towards understanding the combinatorics of coefficients in the branching rules of the superch…
It is well-known that the representation theory of the finite group of unipotent upper-triangular matrices $U_n$ over a finite field is a wild problem. By instead considering approximately irreducible representations (supercharacters), one obtains a rich combinatorial theory analogous to that of the symmetric group, where we replace partition combinatorics with set-partitions. This paper studies Diaconis--Isaacs' concept of superinduction in pattern groups. While superinduction shares many desirable properties with usual induction, it no longer takes characters to characters. We begin by findi…
The $G$-representation variety $R_G(Σ_g)$ parametrizes the representations of the fundamental groups of surfaces $π_1(Σ_g)$ into an algebraic group $G$. Taking $G$ to be the groups of $n \times n$ upper triangular or unipotent matrices, we compare two methods for computing algebraic invariants of $R_G(Σ_G)$. Using the geometric method initiated by González-Prieto, Logares and Muñoz, based on a Topological Quantum Field Theory (TQFT), we compute the virtual classes of $R_G(Σ_g)$ in the Grothendieck ring of varieties for $n = 1, \ldots, 5$. Introducing the notion of algebraic representatives we …
Let $\UT_n(\FF_q)$ denote the group of unipotent $n\times n$ upper triangular matrices over a finite field with $q$ elements. We show that the Heisenberg characters of $\UT_{n+1}(\FF_q)$ are indexed by lattice paths from the origin to the line $x+y=n$ using the steps $(1,0), (1,1), (0,1), (1,1)$, which are labeled in a certain way by nonzero elements of $\FF_q$. In particular, we prove for $n\geq 1$ that the number of Heisenberg characters of $\UT_{n+1}(\FF_q)$ is a polynomial in $q-1$ with nonnegative integer coefficients and degree $n$, whose leading coefficient is the $n$th Fibonacci number…
We construct a family of orthogonal characters of an algebra group which decompose the supercharacters defined by Diaconis and Isaacs. Like supercharacters, these characters are given by nonnegative integer linear combinations of Kirillov functions and are induced from linear supercharacters of certain algebra subgroups. We derive a formula for these characters and give a condition for their irreducibility; generalizing a theorem of Otto, we also show that each such character has the same number of Kirillov functions and irreducible characters as constituents. In proving these results, we obse…
The article is devoted to the representation theory of locally compact infinite-dimensional group $\mathbb{GLB}$ of almost upper-triangular infinite matrices over the finite field with $q$ elements. This group was defined by S.K., A.V., and Andrei Zelevinsky in 1982 as an adequate $n=\infty$ analogue of general linear groups $\mathbb{GL}(n,q)$. It serves as an alternative to $\mathbb{GL}(\infty,q)$, whose representation theory is poor. Our most important results are the description of semi-finite unipotent traces (characters) of the group $\mathbb{ GLB}$ via certain probability measures on the…
Let $\mathfrak{o}$ be the ring of integers of a non-archimedean local field with the maximal ideal $\wp$ and the finite residue field of characteristic $p.$ Let $\mathbf{G}$ be the General Linear or Special Linear group with entries from the finite quotients $\mathfrak{o}/\wp^\ell$ of $\mathfrak{o}$ and $\mathbf{U}$ be the subgroup of $\mathbf{G}$ consisting of upper triangular unipotent matrices. We prove that the induced representation $\mathrm{Ind}^{\mathbf{G}}_{\mathbf{U}}(θ)$ of $\mathbf{G}$ obtained from a ${\it non-degenerate}$ character $θ$ of $\mathbf{U}$ is multiplicity free for all …
Let $G=GL_{n}(\mathbb{C})$ and $1\neψ:\mathbb{C}\to\mathbb{C}^{\times}$ be an additive character. Let $U$ be the subgroup of upper triangular unipotent matrices in $G$. Denote by $θ$ the character $θ:U\to\mathbb{C}$ given by \[ θ(u):=ψ(u_{1,2}+u_{2,3}+...+u_{n-1,n}). \] Let $P$ be the mirabolic subgroup of $G$ consisting of all matrices in $G$ with the last row equal to $(0,0,...,0,1)$. We prove that if $π$ is an irreducible generic representation of $GL_{n}(\mathbb{C})$ and $\mathcal{W}(π,ψ)$ is its Whittaker model, then the space $\{f|_{P}:P\to \mathbb{C}:\, f\in \mathcal{W}(π,ψ)\}$ contains…
