On Multiplicity-Free Products of Schur P-Functions

Recently Stembridge obtained the classification of multiplicity-free products of Schur functions, and thus of multiplicity-free outer products of irreducible characters of the symmetric groups. In this paper, the multiplicity-free products of Schur P-functions are classified, and then this is applied to the case of projective outer products of spin characters of the double covers of the symmetric groups.     

Extended centroid and central closure of semiprime normed algebras. a first approach

In this paper, we classify all the multiplicity-free permutation characters of sporadic simple groups and their automorphism groups. This project is an application of the group theory system GAP, its character table library, and its library of tables of marks.     

Functors between shape categories

Permutation groups of prime power degree are investigated here through the study of the corresponding group algebra of the set of all functions from the underlying set on which the permutation group acts to a finite field of characteristic p. For the case when the permutation group is of degree p² acting on a set consisting of the direct product of two elementary abelian p-groups, the structure of a minimal permutation module is obtained under certain conditions. The proofs do not depend on the recent classification results of finite simple groups.     

Complex group algebras of finite groups: Brauer's Problem 1

Brauer's Problem 1 asks the following: What are the possible complex group algebras of finite groups? It seems that with the present knowledge of representation theory it is not possible to settle this question. The goal of this paper is to present a partial solution to this problem. We conjecture that if the complex group algebra of a finite group does not have more than a fixed number m of isomorphic summands, then its dimension is bounded in terms of m. We prove that this is true for every finite group if it is true for the symmetric groups. The problem for symmetric groups reduces to an explicitly stated question in number theory or combinatorics.     

Distance-transitive representations of the sporadic groups

A permutation representation of a finite group is multiplicity-free if all the irreducible constituents in the permutation character are distinct. There are three main reasons why these representations are interesting: it has been checked that all finite simple groups have such permutation representations, these are often of geometric interest, and the actions on vertices of distance-transitive graphs are multiplicity-free.

In this paper we classify the primitive multiplicity-free representations of the sporadic simple groups and their automorphism groups. We determine all the distance-transitive graphs arising from these representations. Moreover, we obtain intersection matrices for most of these actions, which are of further interest and should be useful in future investigations of the sporadic simple 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     

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.     

On Multiplicity-Free Skew Characters and the Schubert Calculus

In this paper we introduce a partial order on the set of skew characters of the symmetric group which we use to classify the multiplicity-free skew characters. Furthermore, we give a short and easy proof that the Schubert calculus is equivalent to that of skew characters in the following sense: If we decompose the product of two Schubert classes we get the same as if we decompose a skew character and replace the irreducible characters by Schubert classes of the ‘inverse’ partitions (Theorem 4.3).     

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     

On the Navarro-Willems conjecture for blocks of finite groups

We prove that a set of characters of a finite group can only be the set of characters for principal blocks of the group at two different primes when the primes do not divide the group order. This confirms a conjecture of Navarro and Willems in the case of principal blocks.     

The evaluation of irreducible polynomial representations of the general linear groups and of the unitary groups over fields of characteristic 0

We describe an efficient method for the computer evaluation of the ordinary irreducible polynomial representations of general linear groups using an integral form of the ordinary irreducible representations of symmetric groups. In order to do this, we first give an algebraic explanation of D. E. Littlewood's modification of I. Schur's construction. Then we derive a formula for the entries of the representing matrices which is much more concise and adapted to the effective use of computer calculations. Finally, we describe how one obtains — using this time an orthogonal form of the ordinary irreducible representations of symmetric groups — a version which yields a unitary representation when it is restricted to the unitary subgroup. In this way we adapt D. B. Hunter's results which heavily rely on Littlewood's methods, and boson polynomials come into the play so that we also meet the needs of applications to physics.     

Young modules and filtration multiplicities for Brauer algebras

We define permutation modules and Young modules for the Brauer algebra B _k (r,δ), and show that if the characteristic of the field k is neither 2 nor 3 then every permutation module is a sum of Young modules, respecting an ordering condition similar to that for symmetric groups. Moreover, we determine precisely in which cases cell module filtration multiplicities are well-defined, as done by Hemmer and Nakano for symmetric groups. Supported by the European Community through Marie Curie fellowship MCFI 2002-01325 Supported by EPSRC grant GR/S18151/01     

On Nonprojective Block Components of Lefschetz Characters for Sporadic Geometries

This work examines the possible projectivity of 2-modular block parts of nonprojective Lefschetz characters over 2-local geometries of several sporadic groups. Previously known results on M ₁₂, J ₂, and HS are mentioned for completeness. The main new results are on the sporadic groups Suz, Co ₃, Ru, O′N, and He. For each group, the Lefschetz character is calculated, and its 2-modular block parts are examined for projectivity. In each case it is confirmed that a nonprincipal block part contains a nonprojective summand. The case of O′N is additionally found to have a nonprojective summand in its principal block part. Nineteen of the sporadic groups (including many previously known cases) are categorized into three classes based on projectivity properties of their Lefschetz characters.     

The vertices and sources of the basic spin module for the symmetric group in characteristic 2

In this article we determine the vertices and sources of the basic spin module for the symmetric group S_n of degree n over a field of characteristic 2.     

Finding characters satisfying a maximal condition for their unipotent support

In this article we extend independent results of Lusztig and Hézard concerning the existence of irreducible characters of finite reductive groups (defined in good characteristic and arising from simple algebraic groups), satisfying a strong numerical relationship with their unipotent support. Along the way we obtain some results concerning quasi-isolated semisimple elements.     

Comparison of Gelfand-Tsetlin Bases for Alternating and Symmetric Groups

Young’s orthogonal basis is a classical basis for an irreducible representation of a symmetric group. This basis happens to be a Gelfand-Tsetlin basis for the chain of symmetric groups. It is well-known that the chain of alternating groups, just like the chain of symmetric groups, has multiplicity-free restrictions for irreducible representations. Therefore each irreducible representation of an alternating group also admits Gelfand-Tsetlin bases. Moreover, each such representation is either the restriction of, or a subrepresentation of, the restriction of an irreducible representation of a symmetric group. In this article, we describe a recursive algorithm to write down the expansion of each Gelfand-Tsetlin basis vector for an irreducible representation of an alternating group in terms of Young’s orthogonal basis of the ambient representation of the symmetric group. This algorithm is implemented with the Sage Mathematical Software.     

Minimal Bar Tableaux

Motivated by recent results of Stanley, we generalize the rank of a partition λ to the rank of a shifted partition S(λ). We show that the number of bars required in a minimal bar tableau of S(λ) is max(o, e + (ℓ(λ) mod 2)), where o and e are the number of odd and even rows of λ. As a consequence we show that the irreducible projective characters of S_n vanish on certain conjugacy classes. Another corollary is a lower bound on the degree of the terms in the expansion of Schur’s Q_λ symmetric functions in terms of the power sum symmetric functions. Received November 20, 2003     

The permutation class group of a finite group

Analogously to the projective class group, the permutation class group of a finite group π can be defined as the group of equivalence classes of direct summands of integral permutation modules modulo permutation modules. It is shown that this group behaves nicely with respect to localization and completion, which then is used to prove that contrary to the projective class group - it is not always a torsion group. More precisely, the rank of the permutation class of group is computed.