We study the Sylow permutation character of the symmetric group at the prime 2 and prove some new bounds on the number of parts of partitions corresponding to its constituents.
Let $p$ be an odd prime and let $n$ be a natural number. In this article we determine the irreducible constituents of the permutation module induced by the action of the symmetric group $\mathfrak{S}_n$ on the cosets of a Sylow $p$-subgroup $P_n$. As a consequence, we determine the number of irreducible representations of the corresponding Hecke algebra $\mathcal{H}(\mathfrak{S}_n, P_n, 1_{P_n})$.
We prove that a finite group $G$ has a normal Sylow $p$-subgroup $P$ if, and only if, every irreducible character of $G$ appearing in the permutation character $({\bf 1}_P)^G$ with multiplicity coprime to $p$ has degree coprime to $p$. This confirms a prediction by Malle and Navarro from 2012. Our proof of the above result depends on a reduction to simple groups and ultimately on a combinatorial analysis of the properties of Sylow branching coefficients for symmetric groups.
Let $p\ge 5$ be a prime and let $n$ be a natural number. In this article we describe the irreducible constituents of the induced characters $ϕ\big\uparrow^{\mathfrak{S}_n}$ for arbitrary linear characters $ϕ$ of a Sylow $p$-subgroup of the symmetric group $\mathfrak{S}_n$, generalising earlier results of the authors. By doing so, we introduce Sylow branching coefficients for symmetric groups.
Let $p$ be any prime. Let $P_n$ be a Sylow $p$-subgroup of the symmetric group $S_n$. Let $ϕ$ and $ψ$ be linear characters of $P_n$ and let $N$ be the normaliser of $P_n$ in $S_n$. In this article we show that the inductions of $ϕ$ and $ψ$ to $S_n$ are equal if, and only if, $ϕ$ and $ψ$ are $N$--conjugate. This is an analogue for symmetric groups of a result of Navarro for $p$-solvable groups.
We restrict irreducible characters of alternating groups of degree divisible by $p$ to their Sylow $p$-subgroups and study the number of linear constituents.
The character table of a finite group G determines whether |P:P'|=p^2 and whether |P:Z(P)|=p^2, where P is a Sylow p-subgroup of G. To prove the latter, we give a detailed classification of those groups in terms of the generalized Fitting subgroup.
Let $U$ be a Sylow $p$-subgroup of the finite Chevalley group of type $D_4$ over the field of $q$ elements, where $q$ is a power of a prime $p$. We describe a construction of the generic character table of $U$.
We use binary trees to study the Bratteli diagram of Sylow 2-subgroups of symmetric groups. We show that it is simple, has a recursive structure, and self-similarities at all scales. We contrast its subgraph of one-dimensional representations with the Macdonald tree. We exploit the recursive structure to find the multiplicities of irreducible characters in the restriction to a Sylow 2-subgroup of odd-dimensional representations of the symmetric group $S_{2^k}$.
Let $k$ be a field of characteristic $p > 0$. For $G$ an elementary abelian $p$-group, there exist collections of permutation module such that if $C^*$ is any exact bounded complex whose terms are sums of copies of modules from the collection, then $C^*$ is contractible. A consequence is that if $G$ is any finite group whose Sylow $p$-subgroups are not cyclic or quaternion, and if $C^*$ is a bounded exact complex such that each $C^i$ is direct sum of one dimensional modules and projective modules, then $C^*$ is contractible.
In this paper, we study some variations of the well-known Itô-Michler theorem for $p$-Brauer characters using various inequalities involving the $p$-Brauer character degrees of finite groups. Several new criteria for the existence of a normal Sylow $p$-subgroup of finite groups are obtained using the $p$-parts and $p'$-parts of the $p$-Brauer character degrees.
Let $U(q)$ be a Sylow $p$-subgroup of the Chevalley groups $D_4(q)$ where $q$ is a power of a prime $p$. We describe a construction of all complex irreducible characters of $U(q)$ and obtain a classification of these irreducible characters via the root subgroups which are contained in the center of these characters. Furthermore, we show that the multiplicities of the degrees of these irreducible characters are given by polynomials in $q-1$ with nonnegative coefficients.
We develop in this work a method to parametrize the set $\mathrm{Irr}(U)$ of irreducible characters of a Sylow $p$-subgroup $U$ of a finite Chevalley group $G(p^f)$ which is valid for arbitrary primes $p$, in particular when $p$ is a very bad prime for $G$. As an application, we parametrize $\mathrm{Irr}(U)$ when $G=\mathrm{F}_4(2^f)$.
The classical Itô-Michler theorem on character degrees of finite groups asserts that if the degree of every complex irreducible character of a finite group $G$ is coprime to a given prime $p$, then $G$ has a normal Sylow $p$-subgroup. We propose a new direction to generalize this theorem by introducing an invariant concerning character degrees. We show that if the average degree of linear and even-degree irreducible characters of $G$ is less than $4/3$ then $G$ has a normal Sylow $2$-subgroup, as well as corresponding analogues for real-valued characters and strongly real characters. These res…
Let $\F_q$ be a field of characteristic $p$ with $q$ elements. It is known that the degrees of the irreducible characters of the Sylow $p$-subgroup of $GL_n(\F_q)$ are powers of $q$ by Issacs. On the other hand Sangroniz showed that this is true for a Sylow $p$-subgroup of a classical group defined over $\F_q$ if and only if $p$ is odd. For the classical groups of Lie type $B$, $C$ and $D$ the only bad prime is 2. For the exceptional groups there are others. In this paper we construct irreducible characters for the Sylow $p$-subgroups of the Chevalley groups $D_4(q)$ with $q=2^f$ of degree $q^…
We prove for finite reductive groups $G$ of classical type, that every irreducible character of $L$ extends to its inertia group in $N$, where $L$ is an abelian centraliser of a Sylow $d$-torus $\mathbf S$ of $G$ and $N:=N_G(\mathbf S)$. This gives a precise description of the irreducible characters of $N$. Furthermore it enables us to verify the McKay conjecture in this situation for $G$ and some primes.
We determine the character tables of Sylow $p$-subgroups $U$ of the Steinberg triality groups ${^3}D_4(q^3)$, where $q$ is a power of an odd prime $p$.
For any prime $p$ and $S$ a $p$-group isomorphic to a Sylow $p$-subgroup of a rank $2$ simple group of Lie type in characteristic $p$, we determine all saturated fusion systems supported on $S$ up to isomorphism.
Let $q$ be a power of a prime $p$, let $G$ be a finite Chevalley group over $\mathbb{F}_q$ and let $U$ be a Sylow $p$-subgroup of $G$; we assume that $p$ is not a very bad prime for $G$. We explain a procedure of reduction of irreducible complex characters of $U$, which leads to an algorithm whose goal is to obtain a parametrization of the irreducible characters of $U$ along with a means to construct these characters as induced characters. A focus in this paper is determining the parametrization when $G$ is of type $\mathrm{F}_4$, where we observe that the parametrization is "uniform" over goo…
We parametrize the set of irreducible characters of the Sylow $p$-subgroups of the Chevalley groups $\mathrm{D}_6(q)$ and $\mathrm{E}_6(q)$, for an arbitrary power $q$ of any prime $p$. In particular, we establish that the parametrization is uniform for $p \ge 3$ in type $\mathrm{D}_6$ and for $p \ge 5$ in type $\mathrm{E}_6$, while the prime $2$ in type $\mathrm{D}_6$ and the primes $2,$ $3$ in type $\mathrm{E}_6$ yield character degrees of the form $q^m/p^i$ which force a departure from the generic situations. Also for the first time in our analysis we see a family of irreducible characters …
We study the restriction to Sylow subgroups of irreducible characters of symmetric groups. In particular, we focus our attention on constituents of degree greater than 1. Our main result is a wide generalization of Theorem 3.1 of Giannelli and Navarro, "Restricting irreducible characters to Sylow p-subgroups".
We define and study supercharacters of the classical finite unipotent groups of symplectic and orthogonal types (over any finite field of odd characteristic). We show how supercharacters for groups of those types can be obtained by restricting the supercharacter theory of the finite unitriangular group, and prove that supercharacters are orthogonal and provide a partition of the set of all irreducible characters. We also describe all irreducible characters of maximum degree in terms of the root system, and show how they can be obtained as constituents of particular supercharacters.
G. Navarro has conjectured a necessary and sufficient condition for a finite group $G$ to have a self-normalizing Sylow 2-subgroup, which is given in terms of the ordinary irreducible characters of $G$. In a previous article, the author has reduced the proof of this conjecture to showing that certain related statements hold for simple groups. In this article, we describe the action of Galois automorphisms on the Howlett-Lehrer parametrization of Harish-Chandra induced characters. We use this to complete the proof of the conjecture by showing that the remaining simple groups satisfy the require…
We prove a recursive formula for plethysm coefficients of the form $a^μ_{λ,(m)}$, generalising results on plethysms due to Bruns--Conca--Varbaro and de Boeck--Paget--Wildon. From this we deduce a stability result and resolve two conjectures of de Boeck concerning plethysms, as well as obtain new results on Sylow branching coefficients for symmetric groups for the prime 2. Further, letting $P_n$ denote a Sylow 2-subgroup of $S_n$, we show that almost all Sylow branching coefficients of $S_n$ corresponding to the trivial character of $P_n$ are positive.
Let $p$ be an odd prime number. In this paper, we characterize the nonabelian composition factors of a finite group with odd $p$-Sylow automizers, and then prove that the McKay conjecture, the Alperin weight conjecture and the Alperin-McKay conjecture hold for such group.
Let $q$ be a power of a prime $p$ and let $U(q)$ be a Sylow $p$-subgroup of a finite Chevalley group $G(q)$ defined over the field with $q$ elements. We first give a parametrization of the set $\text{Irr}(U(q))$ of irreducible characters of $U(q)$ when $G(q)$ is of type $\mathrm{G}_2$. This is uniform for primes $p \ge 5$, while the bad primes $p=2$ and $p=3$ have to be considered separately. We then use this result and the contribution of several authors to show a general result, namely that if $G(q)$ is any finite Chevalley group with $p$ a bad prime, then there exists a character $χ\in \tex…
We give a description of the irreducible constituents of the restriction to Sylow 2-subgroups of irreducible characters of symmetric groups labelled by hook partitions.
We characterize finite groups having a cyclic Sylow p-subgroup in terms of the action of a specific Galois automorphism on the principal p-block for p=2,3. We show that the analog statement for blocks with arbitrary defect group would follow from the blockwise McKay-Navarro conjecture.
We show that the Sylow $p$-subgroups of a symmetric group, respectively an alternating group, are characterized as the $p$-subgroups containing all elementary abelian $p$-subgroups up to conjugacy of the symmetric group, respectively the alternating group. We apply the characterization result for symmetric groups to compute the vertices of the hook Specht modules associated to the partition $(kp-p,1^p)$ under the assumption that $k \equiv 1$ mod $p$ and $k \not\equiv 1$ mod $p^2$.
In 1973, I. M. Isaacs described a correspondence between characters of degree not divisible by a fixed prime $p$ of a finite solvable group $G$ and those of the normalizer of Sylow $p$-subgroup of $G$, whenever the index of the normalizer in $G$ is odd. This correspondence is natural in the sense that an algorithm is provided to compute it, and the result of the application of the algorithm does not depend on choices made. Later on, for $p$-solvable groups with self-normalizing Sylow $p$-subgroup, G. Navarro showed that every irreducible character of degree not divisible by $p$ has a unique li…
Let G be a finite group and let p be a prime. A module for G over a field of characteristic p is called algebraic if it satisfies a polynomial, with addition and multiplication given by direct sum and tensor product. In some sense, having this property is equivalent to the tensor structure being 'nice' for that module. In this paper we prove that if G is a group with abelian Sylow 2-subgroups, and p=2, then all simple modules for G are algebraic. We include the conjecture that this result holds for all abelian 2-blocks.
We construct a supercharacter theory, and establish the supercharacter table for Sylow $p$-subgroups $G_2^{syl}(q)$ of the Chevalley groups $G_2(q)$ of Lie type $G_2$ when $p>2$. Then we calculate the conjugacy classes, determine the complex irreducible characters by Clifford theory, and obtain the character tables for $G_2^{syl}(q)$ when $p>3$.
Let G be a finite group with cyclic Sylow p-subgroup, and let k be a field of characteristic p. Then H^*(BG;k) and H_*(ΩBG\phat;k) are A_{\infty} algebras whose structure we determine up to quasi-isomorphism.
We determine a supercharacter theory for Sylow $p$-subgroups ${^2{G}_2^{syl}(3^{2m+1})}$ of the Ree groups $^2{G}_2(3^{2m+1})$, calculate the conjugacy classes of ${^2{G}_2^{syl}(3^{2m+1})}$, and establish the character table of ${^2{G}_2^{syl}(3)}$.
Navarro has conjectured a necessary and sufficient condition for a finite group $G$ to have a self-normalising Sylow $2$-subgroup, which is given in terms of the ordinary irreducible characters of $G$. The first-named author has reduced the proof of this conjecture to showing that certain related statements hold when $G$ is quasisimple. In this article we show that these conditions are satisfied when $G/Z(G)$ is $\mathrm{PSL}_n(q)$, $\mathrm{PSU}_n(q)$, or a simple group of Lie type defined over a finite field of characteristic $2$.
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…
Let $G$ be a finite group with Sylow $2$-subgroup $P \leqslant G$. Navarro-Tiep-Vallejo have conjectured that the principal $2$-block of $N_G(P)$ contains exactly one irreducible Brauer character if and only if all odd-degree ordinary irreducible characters in the principal $2$-block of $G$ are fixed by a certain Galois automorphism $σ\in \mathrm{Gal}(\mathbb{Q}_{|G|}/\mathbb{Q})$. Recent work of Navarro-Vallejo has reduced this conjecture to a problem about finite simple groups. We show that their conjecture holds for all finite simple groups, thus establishing the conjecture for all finite g…
We construct a differential graded algebra (DGA) modelling certain $A_\infty$ algebras associated with a finite group $G$ with cyclic Sylow subgroups, namely $H^*BG$ and $H_*ΩBG^{^\wedge}_p$. We use our construction to investigate the singularity and cosingularity categories of these algebras. We give a complete classification of the indecomposables in these categories, and describe the Auslander--Reiten quiver. The theory applies to Brauer tree algebras in arbitrary characteristic, and we end with an example in characteristic zero coming from the Hecke algebras of symmetric groups.
Let $UY_n(q)$ be a Sylow p-subgroup of an untwisted Chevalley group $Y_n(q)$ of rank n defined over $\mathbb{F}_q$ where q is a power of a prime p. We partition the set $Irr(UY_n(q))$ of irreducible characters of $UY_n(q)$ into families indexed by antichains of positive roots of the root system of type $Y_n$. We focus our attention on the families of characters of $UY_n(q)$ which are indexed by antichains of length 1. Then for each positive root $α$ we establish a one to one correspondence between the minimal degree members of the family indexed by $α$ and the linear characters of a certain su…
We study the finitely generated abelian group $T(G)$ of endo-trivial $kG$-modules where $kG$ is the group algebra of a finite group $G$ over a field of characteristic $p>0$. When the representation type of the group algebra is not wild, the group structure of $T(G)$ is known for the cases where a Sylow $p$-subgroup $P$ of $G$ is cyclic, semi-dihedral and generalized quaternion. We investigate $T(G)$, and more accurately, its torsion subgroup $TT(G)$ for the case where $P$ is a Klein-four group. More precisely, we give a necessary and sufficient condition in terms of the centralizers of involut…
Let $k$ be an algebraically closed field of characteristic $p>0$ and $G$ a finite group. We provide a description of the torsion subgroup $TT(G)$ of the finitely generated abelian group $T(G)$ of endo-trivial $kG$-modules when $p=2$ and $G$ has a dihedral Sylow $2$-subgroup $P$. We prove that, in the case $|P|\geq 8$, $TT(G)\cong X(G)$ the group of one-dimensional $kG$-modules, except possibly when $G/O_{2'}(G)\cong \mathfrak{A}_6$, the alternating group of degree $6$; in which case $G$ may have $9$-dimensional simple torsion endo-trivial modules. We also prove a similar result in the case $|P…
For the $p$-Sylow subgroups $U$ of the finite classical groups of untwisted Lie type, $p$ an odd prime, we construct a monomial $\mathbb C U$-module $M$ which is isomorphic to the regular representation of $\mathbb C G$ by a modification of Kirillov's orbit method called monomial linearisation. We classify a certain subclass of orbits of the $U$-action on the monomial basis of $M$ consisting of so called staircase orbits and show, that every orbit module in $M$ is isomorphic to a staircase one. Finally we decompose the André-Neto supercharacters of $U$ into a sum of $U$-characters afforded by …
Broué, Malle and Michel have shown that the automizer of an abelian Sylow p-subgroup in a finite simple Chevalley group is an irreducible complex reflection group, for p not too small and different from the defining characteristic. The aim is this note is to show that a suitable version of this property holds for general finite groups. As an example, the automizer of an 11-Sylow subgroup in the Monster is the 2-dimensional complex reflection group G_{16}.
