Irreducible tensor products for alternating groups in characteristic 2

In this paper we completely characterise irreducible tensor products of a basic spin module with an irreducible module for alternating groups in characteristic 2. This completes the classification of irreducible tensor products of representations of alternating groups.     

Arithmetic of characters of generalized symmetric groups

The result here answers the following questions in the affirmative: Can the Galois action on all abelian (Galois) fields $K/\mathbb{Q}$ be realized explicitly via an action on characters of some finite group? Are all subfields of a cyclotomic field of the form $\mathbb{Q}(\chi)$, for some irreducible character $\chi$ of a finite group G? In particular, we explicitly determine the Galois action on all irreducible characters of the generalized symmetric groups. We also determine the smallest extension of $\mathbb{Q}$ required to realize (using matrices) a given irreducible representation of a generalized symmetric group. Received: 18 February 2002     

Irreducible <Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis>-Brauer characters of <Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis>-power degree for the symmetric and alternating groups

Starting from the question when all irreducible p-Brauer characters for a symmetric or an alternating group are of p-power degree, we classify the p-modular irreducible representations of p-power dimension in some families of representations for these groups. In particular, this then allows to confirm a conjecture by W. Willems for the alternating groups. Received: 14 June 2006     

Irreducible decompositions of unitary representations of infinite- dimensional groups

This paper concerns the problem of irreducible decompositions of unitary representations of topological groups G, including the group Diff₀(M) of diffeomorphisms with compact support on smooth manifolds M. It is well known that the problem is affirmative, when G is a locally compact, separable group (cf. [3, 4]). We extend this result to infinite-dimensional groups with appropriate quasi-invariant measures, and, in particular, we show that every continuous unitary representation of Diff₀(M) has an irreducible decomposition under a fairly mild condition. This research was partially supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (No.14540167), Japan Socieity of the Promotion of Science.     

Functors for unitary representations of classical real groups and affine Hecke algebras

We define exact functors from categories of Harish–Chandra modules for certain real classical groups to finite-dimensional modules over an associated graded affine Hecke algebra with parameters. We then study some of the basic properties of these functors. In particular, we show that they map irreducible spherical representations to irreducible spherical representations and, moreover, that they preserve unitarity. In the case of split classical groups, we thus obtain a functorial inclusion of the real spherical unitary dual (with “real infinitesimal character”) into the corresponding p-adic spherical unitary dual.     

Multiplicity-free representations of symmetric groups

Building on work of Saxl, we classify the multiplicity-free permutation characters of all symmetric groups of degree 66 or more. A corollary is a complete list of the irreducible characters of symmetric groups (again of degree 66 or more) which may appear in a multiplicity-free permutation representation. The multiplicity-free characters in a related family of monomial characters are also classified. We end by investigating a consequence of these results for Specht filtrations of permutation modules defined over fields of prime characteristic.     

Geometric interpretations of two branching theorems of D.E. Littlewood

D.E. Littlewood proved two branching theorems for decomposing the restriction of an irreducible finite-dimensional representation of a unitary group to a symmetric subgroup. One is for restriction of a representation of U(n) to the rotation group SO(n) when the given representation τ_λ of U(n) has nonnegative highest weight λ of depth n/2. It says that the multiplicity in τ_λ|_SO(n) of an irreducible representation of SO(n) of highest weight ν is the sum over μ of the multiplicities of τ_λ in the U(n) tensor product τ_μτ_ν, the allowable μ's being all even nonnegative highest weights for U(n). Littlewood's proof is character-theoretic. The present paper gives a geometric interpretation of this theorem involving the tensor products τ_μτ_ν explicitly. The geometric interpretation has an application to the construction of small infinite-dimensional unitary representations of indefinite orthogonal groups and, for each of these representations, to the determination of its restriction to a maximal compact subgroup. The other Littlewood branching theorem is for restriction from U(2r) to the rank-r quaternion unitary group Sp(r). It concerns nonnegative highest weights for U(2r) of depth r, and its statement is of the same general kind. The present paper finds an analogous geometric interpretation for this theorem also.     

Modular irreducible representations of the symmetric group as linear codes

We describe a particularly easy way of evaluating the modular irreducible matrix representations of the symmetric group. It shows that Specht’s approach to the ordinary irreducible representations, along Specht polynomials, can be unified with Clausen’s approach to the modular irreducible representations using symmetrized standard bideterminants. The unified method, using symmetrized Specht polynomials, is very easy to explain, and it follows directly from Clausen’s theorem by replacing the indeterminate x_ij of the letter place algebra by x_jⁱ.Our approach is implemented in SYMMETRICA. It was used in order to obtain computational results on code theoretic properties of the p-modular irreducible representation [λ]_p corresponding to a p-regular partition λ via embedding it into representation spaces obtained from ordinary irreducible representations. The first embedding is into the permutation representation induced from the column group of a standard Young tableau of shape λ. The second embedding is the embedding of [λ]_p into the space of , the p-modular representation obtained from the ordinary irreducible representation [λ] by reducing the coefficients modulo p.We include a few tables with dimensions and minimum distances of these codes; others can be found via our home page.     

Polynomial representations of the symplectic groups

The irreducible finite dimensional representations of the symplectic groups are realized as polynomials on the irreducible representation spaces of the corresponding general linear groups. It is shown that the number of times an irreducible representation of a maximal symplectic subgroup occurs in a given representation of a symplectic group, is related to the betweenness conditions of representations of the corresponding general linear groups. Using this relation, it is shown how to construct polynomial bases for the irreducible representation spaces of the symplectic groups in which the basis labels come from the representations of the symplectic subgroup chain, and the multiplicity labels come from representations of the odd dimensional general linear groups, as well as from subgroups. The irreducible representations of Sp(4) are worked out completely, and several examples from Sp(6) are given.     

Unitary representations of the conformal group

Conclusions The main results of the present paper are given in Tables 1 and 2. We have obtained all irreducible unitary representations of the conformal group and we have also found the explicit form of the invariant bilinear Hermitian form for all the representations (both unitary and nonunitary) for which it exists. Considerable interest attaches to the determination of the characters of the irreducible representations and also the decomposition of the regular representation. These questions will be considered in following publications for the general case of SO (p, q).Institute of High-Energy Physics. Translated from Teoreticheskaya i Matematicheskaya Fizika, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 181–189, November, 1970.     

Constructing irreducible representations of discrete groups

The decomposition of unitary representations of a discrete group obtained by induction from a subgroup involves commensurators. In particular Mackey has shown that quasi-regular representations are irreducible if and only if the corresponding subgroups are self-commensurizing. The purpose of this work is to describe general constructions of pairs of groups Γ₀ with Γ its own commensurator in Γ. These constructions are then applied to groups of isometries of hyperbolic spaces and to lattices in algebraic groups.     

A series of unitary irreducible representations induced from a symmetric subgroup of a semisimple Lie group

LetG/H be a semisimple symmetric space. Generalizing results of Flensted-Jensen we give a sufficient condition for the existence of irreducible closed invariant subspaces of the unitary representations ofG induced from unitary finite dimensional representations ofH. This provides a method of constructing unitary irreducible representations ofG, and we show by examples that for some irreducible admissible representations ofG, this method exhibits not previously known unitarity.This work was supported by the Danish Natural Science Research Council.     

Character theory of symmetric groups, subgroup growth of Fuchsian groups, and random walks

We develop a number of statistical aspects of symmetric groups (mostly dealing with the distribution of cycles in various subsets of Sn), asymptotic properties of (ordinary) characters of symmetric groups, and estimates for the multiplicities of root number functions of these groups. As main applications, we present an estimate for the subgroup growth of an arbitrary Fuchsian group, a finiteness result for the number of Fuchsian presentations of such a group (resolving a long-standing problem of Roger Lyndon), as well as a proof of a well-known conjecture of Roichman concerning the mixing time of random walks on symmetric groups.     

Commensurability of geometric subgroups of mapping class groups

Let M be an orientable surface with punctures and/or boundary components. Paris and Rolfsen (J Reine Angew Math 521:47–83, 2000) studied “geometric subgroups” of the mapping class group of M, that is subgroups corresponding to inclusions of connected subsurfaces. In the present paper we extend this analysis to disconnected subsurfaces and to the nonorientable case. We characterise the subsurfaces which lead to virtually abelian geometric subgroups. We provide algebraic and geometric conditions under which two geometric subgroups are commensurable. We also describe the commensurator of a geometric subgroup in terms of the stabiliser of the underlying subsurface. Finally, following the work of Paris (Math Ann 322:301–315, 2002), we show some applications of our analysis to the theory of irreducible unitary representations of mapping class groups.     

Vertices of simple modules and normal subgroups ofp-solvable groups

Let π be a set of prime numbers andG a finite π-separable group. Let θ be an irreducible π′-partial character of a normal subgroupN ofG and denote by I_π′ (G‖θ), the set of all irreducible π′-partial characters Φ ofG such that θ is a constituent of Φ_N. In this paper, we obtain some information about the vertices of the elements in I_π′ (G‖θ). As a consequence, we establish an analogue of Fong's theorem on defect groups of covering blocks, for the vertices of the simple modules (in characteristicsp) of a finitep-solvable group lying over a fixed simple module of a normal subgroup.     

A method of proving non-unitarity of representations of p-adic groups I

In this paper we exhibit a new method of proving non-unitarity of representations, based on semi simplicity of unitarizable representations. Non-unitarity is proved for a half of all irreducible representations of classical p-adic groups whose infinitesimal character is the same as the infinitesimal character of a generalized Steinberg representation (as defined in Tadić, Am J Math 120:159–210, 1998). Only the Steinberg representation and its Aubert dual are expected to be unitary here. In this way we partially generalize a result of Casselman to the case of classical groups. Our argument is completely different from Casselman’s argument (which is hard to extend to this case). It requires a very limited knowledge of the inducing cuspidal representation.     

Unitary spherical spectrum for p-adic classical groups

Let G be a split reductive p-adic group. Then the determination of the unitary representations with nontrivial Iwahori fixed vectors can be reduced to the determination of the unitary dual of the corresponding Iwahori-Hecke algebra. In this paper we study the unitary dual of the Iwahori-Hecke algebras corresponding to the classical groups. We determine all the unitary spherical representations.