We prove that a knowledge of the character degrees of a finite group G and of their multiplicities determines whether G has a Sylow p-subgroup as a direct factor. An analogous result based on a knowledge of the conjugacy class sizes was known. We prove variations of both results and discuss their similarities.
We restrict the possibilities for the character degrees of $p$-groups $G$ satisfying $|G:G'| = p^2$. E.g. if $G$ is of maximal class and has an irreducible character of degree $> p$, then it has such a character of degree at most $p^{\frac{p+1}{2}}$.
In this paper, we present a new method to construct solvable groups with derived length four and four character degrees. We then use this method to present a number of new families of groups with derived length four and four character degrees.
We present some results on character degree sums in connection with certain characteristics of finite groups such as p-solvability, solvability, supersolvability, and nilpotency. Some of them strengthen known results in the literature.
A character of a group is said to be super-monomial if every primitive character inducing it is linear. It is conjectured by Isaacs that every irreducible character of an odd $M$-group is super-monomial. We show that all non linear irreducible characters of lowest degree of an odd $M$-group is super-monomial and provide cases in which one can guarantee that certain irreducible characters of normal subgroups are super-monomial. Finally, we study groups having two irreducible monomial character degrees.
Let G be a finite group and N be a non-trivial normal subgroup of G, such that the average character degree of irreducible characters in Irr(G|N) is less than or equal to 16=5. Then we prove that N is solvable. Also, we prove the solvability of G, by assuming that the average character degree of irreducible characters in Irr(G|N) is strictly less than 16=5. We show that the bounds are sharp.
Berkovich, Chillag and Herzog characterized all finite groups $G$ in which all the nonlinear irreducible characters of $G$ have distinct degrees. In this paper we extend this result showing that a similar characterization holds for all finite solvable groups $G$ that contain a normal subgroup $N$, such that all the irreducible characters of $G$ that do not contain $N$ in their kernel have distinct degrees.
A finite group $G$ is $normally ~monomial$ if all its irreducible characters are induced from linear characters of normal subgroups of $G$. In this paper, we determine all possible irreducible character degree sets of normally monomial 5-groups of maximal class. Moreover, we give an upper bound for the largest irreducible character degree of normally monomial $p$-groups of maximal class in terms of $p$.
We present some variations on some of the main open problems on character degrees. We collect some of the methods that have proven to be very useful to work on these problems. These methods are also useful to solve certain problems on zeros of characters, character kernels and fields of values of characters.
Let $G$ be a finite nilpotent group, $χ$ and $ψ$ be irreducible complex characters of $G$ of prime degree. Assume that $χ(1)=p$. Then either the product $χψ$ is a multiple of an irreducible character or $χψ$ is the linear combination of at least $\frac{p+1}{2}$ distinct irreducible characters.
If $G$ is a solvable group, we take $Δ(G)$ to be the character degree graph for $G$ with primes as vertices. We prove that if $Δ(G)$ is a square, then $G$ must be a direct product.
Let G be a finite non-abelian simple group and let p be a prime. We classify all pairs (G,p) such that the sum of the complex irreducible character degrees of G is greater than the index of a Sylow p-subgroup of G. Our classification includes all groups of Lie type in defining characteristic p (because every Gelfand-Graev character of G is multiplicity free and has degree equal to the above index), and a handful of well-described examples.
Given a finite group G, let cd(G) denote the set of degrees of the irreducible complex characters of G. The character degree graph of G is defined as the simple undirected graph whose vertices are the prime divisors of the numbers in cd(G), two distinct vertices p and q being adjacent if and only if pq divides some number in cd(G). In this paper, we consider the complement of the character degree graph, and we characterize the finite groups for which this complement graph is not bipartite. This extends the analysis of [1], where the solvable case was treated.
Let $S$ be a Suzuki group $^2B_2(q^2)$, where $q^2=2^{2f+1}$, $f\geqslant 1$. In this paper, we determine the degrees of the ordinary complex irreducible characters of every group $G$ such that $S\leqslant G\leqslant \Aut(S)$.
If a group $G$ is $π$-separable, where $π$ is a set of primes, the set of irreducible characters $\operatorname{B}_π(G) \cup \operatorname{B}_{π'}(G)$ can be defined. In this paper, we prove that there are variants of some classical theorems in character theory, namely the Theorem of Ito-Michler and Thompson theorem on character degrees, which involve irreducible characters in the set $\operatorname{B}_π(G) \cup \operatorname{B}_{π'}(G)$.
A recent question of Gabriel Navarro asks whether it is true that the derived length of a defect group is less than or equal to the number of degrees of irreducible characters in a block. In this article, we bring new evidence towards the validity of this statement.
We show that the largest character degree of an alternating group $A_n$ with $n\geq 5$ can be bounded in terms of smaller degrees in the sense that \[ b(A_n)^2<\sum_{ψ\in\textrm{Irr}(A_n),\,ψ(1)< b(A_n)}ψ(1)^2, \] where $\textrm{Irr}(A_n)$ and $b(A_n)$ respectively denote the set of irreducible complex characters of $A_n$ and the largest degree of a character in $\textrm{Irr}(A_n)$. This confirms a prediction of I. M. Isaacs for the alternating groups and answers a question of M. Larsen, G. Malle, and P. H. Tiep.
We are interested in determining the bound of the average of the degrees of the irreducible characters whose degrees are not divisible by some prime $p$ that guarantees a finite group $G$ of odd order is $p$-nilpotent. We find a bound that depends on the prime $p$. If we further restrict our average by fixing a subfield $k$ of the complex numbers and then compute the average of the degrees of the irreducible characters whose degrees are not divisible by $p$ and have values in $k$, then we will see that we obtain a bound that depends on both $p$ and $k$. Moreover, we find examples that make tho…
Let N be a minimal normal nonabelian subgroup of a finite group G. We will show that there exists a nontrivial irreducible character of N of degree at least 5 which is extendible to G. This result will be used to settle two open questions raised by Berkovich and Mann, and Berkovich and Zhmud'.
We construct solvable groups where the only degree of an irreducible character that is a prime power is $1$ and that have arbitrarily large Fitting heights. We will show that we can construct such groups that also have a Sylow tower. We also will show that we can construct such groups using only three primes.
Let $G$ be a finite group and $d$ the degree of a complex irreducible character of $G$, then write $|G|=d(d+e)$ where $e$ is a nonnegative integer. We prove that $|G|\leq e^4-e^3$ whenever $e>1$. This bound is best possible and improves on several earlier related results.
Let G be a finite group. Denoting by cd(G) the set of degrees of the irreducible complex characters of G, we consider the character degree graph of G: this is the (simple undirected) graph whose vertices are the prime divisors of the numbers in cd(G), and two distinct vertices p, q are adjacent if and only if pq divides some number in cd(G). In the series of three papers starting with the present one, we analyze the structure of the finite non-solvable groups whose character degree graph possesses a cut-vertex, i.e., a vertex whose removal increases the number of connected components of the gr…
We prove that the order of a finite group $G$ with trivial solvable radical is bounded above in terms of ${\rm acd}(G)$, the average degree of the irreducible characters. It is not true that the index of the Fitting subgroup is bounded above in terms of ${\rm acd}(G)$, but we show that in certain cases it is bounded in terms of the degrees of the irreducible characters of $G$ that lie over a linear character of the Fitting subgroup. This leads us to propose a refined version of Gluck's conjecture.
We classify the finite groups whose non-linear irreducible characters that are not conjugate under the natural Galois action have distinct degrees, therefore extending the results in Berkovich et al. [Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. {\bf 115} (1992), 955-959] and Dolfi et al. [Israel J. Math. {\bf 198} (2013), 283-331].
Let $G$ be a finite group and let $\rm{Irr}(G)$ be the set of all irreducible complex characters of $G$. For a character $χ\in \rm{Irr}(G)$, the number $\rm{cod}(χ):=|G:\rm{ker}χ|/χ(1)$ is called the co-degree of $χ$. The set of co-degrees of all irreducible characters of $G$ is denoted by $\rm{cod}(G)$. In this paper, we show that for a non-trivial finite group $G$, $|\rm{Irr}(G)|=|\rm{cod}(G)|$ if and only if $G$ is isomorphic to the cyclic group $\mathbb{Z}_2$ or the symmetric group $S_3$.
We show that if $p$ is a prime and $G$ is a finite $p$-solvable group satisfying the condition that a prime $q$ divides the degree of no irreducible $p$-Brauer character of $G$, then the normalizer of some Sylow $q$-subgroup of $G$ meets all the conjugacy classes of $p$-regular elements of $G$.
A classical theorem of John Thompson on character degrees asserts that if the degree of every ordinary irreducible character of a finite group $G$ is 1 or divisible by a prime $p$, then $G$ has a normal $p$-complement. We obtain a significant improvement of this result by considering the average of $p'$-degrees of irreducible characters. We also consider fields of character values and prove several improvements of earlier related results.
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 $G$ be a finite group. The bipartite divisor graph for the set of irreducible complex character degrees is the undirected graph with vertex set consisting of the prime numbers dividing some character degree and of the non-identity character degrees, where a prime number $p$ is declared to be adjacent to a character degree $m$ if and only if $p$ divides $m$. This graph is bipartite and it encodes two of the most widely studied graphs associated to the character degrees of a finite group: the prime graph and the divisor graph on the set of irreducible character degrees. The scope of this pap…
We investigate prime character degree graphs of solvable groups. In particular, we consider a family of graphs $Γ_{k,t}$ constructed by adjoining edges between two complete graphs in a one-to-one fashion. In this paper we determine completely which graphs $Γ_{k,t}$ occur as the prime character degree graph of a solvable group.
We construct a natural bijection between odd-degree irreducible characters of S_n and linear characters of its Sylow 2-subgroup P_n. When n is a power of 2, we show that such a bijection is nicely induced by the restriction functor. We conclude with a characterization of the irreducible characters χof S_n such that the restriction of χto P_n has a unique linear constituent.
We prove the McKay conjecture on characters of odd degree. A major step in the proof is the verification of the inductive McKay condition for groups of Lie type and primes $\ell$ such that a Sylow $\ell$-subgroup or its maximal normal abelian subgroup is contained in a maximally split torus by means of a new equivariant version of Harish-Chandra induction. Specifics of characters of odd degree, namely that they only lie in very particular Harish-Chandra series then allow us to deduce from it the McKay conjecture for the prime~$2$, hence for characters of odd degree.
Let $G$ be a finite group and let $π$ be a set of primes. Write $\mathrm{Irr}_{π'}(G)$ for the set of irreducible characters of degree not divisible by any prime in $π$. We show that if $π$ contains at most two prime numbers and the only element in $\mathrm{Irr}_{π'}(G)$ is the principal character, then $G=1$.
Let $p$ be a prime divisor of the order of a finite group $G$. Then $G$ has at least $2 \sqrt{p-1}$ complex irreducible characters of degrees prime to $p$. In case $p$ is a prime with $\sqrt{p-1}$ an integer this bound is sharp for infinitely many groups $G$.
The classical Itô-Michler theorem states that the degree of every ordinary irreducible character of a finite group $G$ is coprime to a prime $p$ if and only if the Sylow $p$-subgroups of $G$ are abelian and normal. In an earlier paper, we used the notion of average character degree to prove an improvement of this theorem for the prime $p=2$. In this follow-up paper, we obtain a full improvement for all primes.
Let $H$ be an abelian subgroup of a finite group $G$ and $π$ the set of prime divisors of $|H|$. We prove that $|H O_π(G)/ O_π(G)|$ is bounded above by the largest character degree of $G$. A similar result is obtained when $H$ is nilpotent.
For a finite non-abelian group $G$ let $\rat(G)$ denote the largest ratio of degrees of two nonlinear irreducible characters of $G$. We prove that the number of non-abelian composition factors of $G$ is bounded above by $1.8\ln(\rat(G))+1.3$.
We investigate prime character degree graphs of solvable groups that have six vertices. There are one hundred twelve non-isomorphic connected graphs with six vertices, of which all except nine are classified in this paper. We also completely classify the disconnected graphs with six vertices.
In this paper, we continue the classification work done in the first paper of the same name. With careful modifications of our previous approach, we are able to deduce (with two notable exceptions) which members of the previously introduced graph family manifest as the prime character degree graph of some solvable group.
We prove that if the average of the degrees of the irreducible characters of a finite group $G$ is less than 16/5, then $G$ is solvable. This solves a conjecture of I.M. Isaacs, M. Loukaki, and the first author. We discuss related questions.
In this paper, we will show that nonabelian simple classical groups of Lie type are uniquely determined by the structure of their complex group algebras.
Let $p$ be a prime and $G$ a finite group. We propose a strong bound for the number of $p'$-degree irreducible characters of $G$ in terms of the commutator factor group of a Sylow $p$-subgroup of $G$. The bound arises from a recent conjecture of Navarro and Tiep [NT21] on fields of character values and a phenomenon called the continuity of $p$-rationality level of $p'$-degree characters. This continuity property in turn is predicted by the celebrated McKay-Navarro conjecture [Nav04]. We achieve both the bound and the continuity property for $p=2$.
We compute generating functions for the sum of the real-valued character degrees of the finite general linear and unitary groups, through symmetric function computations. For the finite general linear group, we get a new combinatorial proof that every real-valued character has Frobenius-Schur indicator 1, and we obtain some q-series identities. For the finite unitary group, we expand the generating function in terms of values of Hall-Littlewood functions, and we obtain combinatorial expressions for the character degree sums of real-valued characters with Frobenius-Schur indicator 1 or -1.