We introduce a new method to study rational conjugacy of torsion units in integral group rings using integral and modular representation theory. Employing this new method, we verify the first Zassenhaus conjecture for the group PSL(2, 19). We also prove the Zassenhaus conjecture for PSL(2, 23). In a second application we show that there are no normalized units of order 6 in the integral group rings of M 10 and PGL(2, 9). This completes the proof of a theorem of Kimmerle and Konovalov that shows that the prime graph question has an affirmative answer for all groups having an order divisible by at most three different primes.

Fix an arbitrary finite group A of order a, and let X(n, q) denote the set of homomorphisms from A to the finite general linear group GLn (q). The size of X(n, q) is a polynomial in q. In this note, it is shown that generically this polynomial has degree n 2(1 – a −1) − εr and leading coefficient mr , where εr and mr are constants depending only on r := n mod a. We also present an algorithm for explicitly determining these constants.

A geometric extension algebra is an extension algebra of a semi-simple perverse sheaf (allowing shifts), e.g., a push-forward of the constant sheaf under a projective map. Particular nice situations arise for collapsings of homogeneous vector bundles over homogeneous spaces. In this paper, we study the relationship between partial flag and complete flag cases. Our main result is that the locally finite modules over the geometric extension algebras are related by a recollement. As examples, we investigate parabolic affine nil Hecke algebras, geometric extension algebras associated with parabolic Springer maps and an example of Reineke of a parabolic quiver-graded Hecke algebra.

In this paper, we give an explicit construction of a quasi-idempotent in the $q$ -rook monoid algebra $R_{n}(q)$ and show that it generates the whole annihilator of the tensor space $U^{\otimes n}$ in $R_{n}(q)$ .

We study the extent to which the weak Euclidean and stably free cancellation properties hold for rings of Laurent polynomials with coefficients in an Artinian ring A.

We consider the notion of a free resolution. In general, a free resolution can be of any length depending on the group ring under investigation. The metacyclic groups $G(pq)$ however admit periodic resolutions. In the particular case of $G(21)$ it is possible to achieve a fully diagonalized resolution. In order to achieve a diagonal resolution, we obtain a complete list of indecomposable modules over $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6EC}$ . Such a list aids the decomposition of the augmentation ideal (the first syzygy) into a direct sum of indecomposable modules. Therefore, we are able to achieve a diagonalized map here. From this point it is possible to decompose all of the remaining syzygies in terms of indecomposable modules, leaving a diagonal resolution.

When $G$ is a finite solvable group, we prove that $|G|$ can be bounded by a function in the number of irreducible characters with values in fields where $\mathbb{Q}$ is extended by prime power roots of unity. This gives a character theory analog for solvable groups of a theorem of Héthelyi and Külshammer that bounds the order of a finite group in terms of the number of conjugacy classes of elements of prime power order. In particular, we obtain for solvable groups a generalization of Landau’s theorem.

Some classes of finitely generated hyperabelian groups defined in terms of semipermutability and S-semipermutability are studied in the paper. The classification of finitely generated hyperabelian groups all of whose finite quotients are PST-groups recently obtained by Robinson is behind our results. An alternative proof of such a classification is also included in the paper.

We show how to use Jantzen’s sum formula for Weyl modules to prove semisimplicity criteria for endomorphism algebras of $\mathbf{U}_{q}$ -tilting modules (for any field $\mathbb{K}$ and any parameter $q\in \mathbb{K}-\{0,-1\}$ ). As an application, we recover the semisimplicity criteria for the Hecke algebras of types $\mathbf{A}$ and $\mathbf{B}$ , the walled Brauer algebras and the Brauer algebras from our more general approach.

This article began as a study of the structure of infinite permutation groups $G$ in which point stabilisers are finite and all infinite normal subgroups are transitive. That led to two variations. One is the generalisation in which point stabilisers are merely assumed to satisfy min-n, the minimal condition on normal subgroups. The groups $G$ are then of two kinds. Either they have a maximal finite normal subgroup, modulo which they have either one or two minimal nontrivial normal subgroups, or they have a regular normal subgroup $M$ which is a divisible abelian $p$ -group of finite rank. In the latter case the point stabilisers are finite and act irreducibly on a $p$ -adic vector space associated with  $M$ . This leads to our second variation, which is a study of the finite linear groups that can arise.

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 $\text{Irr}(UY_{n}(q))$ 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 $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}$ we establish a one-to-one correspondence between the minimal degree members of the family indexed by $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}$ and the linear characters of a certain subquotient $\overline{T}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}}$ of $UY_{n}(q)$ . For $Y_{n}=A_{n}$ our single root character construction recovers, among other things, the elementary supercharacters of these groups. Most importantly, though, this paper lays the groundwork for our classification of the elements of $\text{Irr}(UE_{i}(q))$ , $6\leqslant i\leqslant 8$ , and $\text{Irr}(UF_{4}(q))$ .

The generating graph $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}(H)$ of a finite group $H$ is the graph defined on the elements of $H$ , with an edge between two vertices if and only if they generate $H$ . We show that if $H$ is a sufficiently large simple group with $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}(G)\cong \unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}(H)$ for a finite group $G$ , then $G\cong H$ . We also prove that the generating graph of a symmetric group determines the group.

With applications in mind to the representations and cohomology of block algebras, we examine elements of the graded center of a triangulated category when the category has a Serre functor. These are natural transformations from the identity functor to powers of the shift functor that commute with the shift functor. We show that such natural transformations that have support in a single shift orbit of indecomposable objects are necessarily of a kind previously constructed by Linckelmann. Under further conditions, when the support is contained in only finitely many shift orbits, sums of transformations of this special kind account for all possibilities. Allowing infinitely many shift orbits in the support, we construct elements of the graded center of the stable module category of a tame group algebra of a kind that cannot occur with wild block algebras. We use functorial methods extensively in the proof, developing some of this theory in the context of triangulated categories.

Let $\mathbf{G}$ be a connected reductive algebraic group over an algebraic closure $\overline{\mathbb{F}_{p}}$ of the finite field of prime order $p$ and let $F:\mathbf{G}\rightarrow \mathbf{G}$ be a Frobenius endomorphism with $G=\mathbf{G}^{F}$ the corresponding $\mathbb{F}_{q}$ -rational structure. One of the strongest links we have between the representation theory of $G$ and the geometry of the unipotent conjugacy classes of $\mathbf{G}$ is a formula, due to Lusztig (Adv. Math. 94(2) (1992), 139–179), which decomposes Kawanaka’s Generalized Gelfand–Graev Representations (GGGRs) in terms of characteristic functions of intersection cohomology complexes defined on the closure of a unipotent class. Unfortunately, the formula given in Lusztig (Adv. Math. 94(2) (1992), 139–179) is only valid under the assumption that $p$ is large enough. In this article, we show that Lusztig’s formula for GGGRs holds under the much milder assumption that $p$ is an acceptable prime for $\mathbf{G}$ ( $p$ very good is sufficient but not necessary). As an application we show that every irreducible character of $G$ , respectively, character sheaf of $\mathbf{G}$ , has a unique wave front set, respectively, unipotent support, whenever $p$ is good for  $\mathbf{G}$ .

Let $G$ be a finite group acting transitively on a set $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FA}$ . We study what it means for this action to be quasirandom, thereby generalizing Gowers’ study of quasirandomness in groups. We connect this notion of quasirandomness to an upper bound for the convolution of functions associated with the action of $G$ on $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FA}$ . This convolution bound allows us to give sufficient conditions such that sets $S\subseteq G$ and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}_{1},\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}_{2}\subseteq \unicode[STIX]{x1D6FA}$ contain elements $s\in S,\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}_{1}\in \unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}_{1},\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}_{2}\in \unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}_{2}$ such that $s(\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}_{1})=\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}_{2}$ . Other consequences include an analogue of ‘the Gowers trick’ of Nikolov and Pyber for general group actions, a sum-product type theorem for large subsets of a finite field, as well as applications to expanders and to the study of the diameter and width of a finite simple group.

In this article, we propose to use the character theory of compact Lie groups and their orthogonality relations for the study of Frobenius distribution and Sato–Tate groups. The results show the advantages of this new approach in several aspects. With samples of Frobenius ranging in size much smaller than the moment statistic approach, we obtain very good approximation to the expected values of these orthogonality relations, which give useful information about the underlying Sato–Tate groups and strong evidence of the correctness of the generalized Sato–Tate conjecture. In fact, $2^{10}$ to $2^{12}$ points provide satisfactory convergence. Even for $g=2$ , the classical approach using moment statistics requires about $2^{30}$ sample points to obtain such information.

In this paper, we obtain some criteria for $p$ -nilpotency and $p$ -supersolvability of a finite group and extend some known results concerning weakly $S$ -permutably embedded subgroups. In particular, we generalise the main results of Zhang et al. [‘Sylow normalizers and $p$ -nilpotence of finite groups’, Comm. Algebra43(3) (2015), 1354–1363].

Given a commutative complete local noetherian ring $A$ with finite residue field $\boldsymbol{k}$ , we show that there is a topologically finitely generated profinite group $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}$ and an absolutely irreducible continuous representation $\overline{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}}:\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}\rightarrow \text{GL}_{n}(\boldsymbol{k})$ such that $A$ is a universal deformation ring for $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4},\overline{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}}$ .

The trace (or zeroth Hochschild homology) of Khovanov’s Heisenberg category is identified with a quotient of the algebra $W_{1+\infty }$. This induces an action of $W_{1+\infty }$ on the center of the categorified Fock space representation, which can be identified with the action of $W_{1+\infty }$ on symmetric functions.

In 1981, Thompson proved that, if $n\geqslant 1$ is any integer and $G$ is any finite subgroup of $\text{GL}_{n}(\mathbb{C})$ , then $G$ has a semi-invariant of degree at most $4n^{2}$ . He conjectured that, in fact, there is a universal constant $C$ such that for any $n\in \mathbb{N}$ and any finite subgroup $G<\text{GL}_{n}(\mathbb{C})$ , $G$ has a semi-invariant of degree at most $Cn$ . This conjecture would imply that the ${\it\alpha}$ -invariant ${\it\alpha}_{G}(\mathbb{P}^{n-1})$ , as introduced by Tian in 1987, is at most $C$ . We prove Thompson’s conjecture in this paper.