We establish the sharp upper bounds on the indexes for most of the twisted flag varieties under the spin groups ${\operatorname {\mathrm {Spin}}(n)}$.

Let K/k be an extension of number fields. We describe theoretical results and computational methods for calculating the obstruction to the Hasse norm principle for K/k and the defect of weak approximation for the norm one torus \[R_{K/k}^1{\mathbb{G}_m}\]. We apply our techniques to give explicit and computable formulae for the obstruction to the Hasse norm principle and the defect of weak approximation when the normal closure of K/k has symmetric or alternating Galois group.

Given a commutative unital ring R, we show that the finiteness length of a group G is bounded above by the finiteness length of the Borel subgroup of rank one $\textbf {B}_2^{\circ }(R)=\left ( \begin {smallmatrix} * & * \\ 0 & * \end {smallmatrix}\right )\leq\operatorname {\textrm {SL}}_2(R)$ whenever G admits certain R-representations with metabelian image. Combined with results due to Bestvina–Eskin–Wortman and Gandini, this gives a new proof of (a generalization of) Bux’s equality on the finiteness length of S-arithmetic Borel groups. We also give an alternative proof of an unpublished theorem due to Strebel, characterizing finite presentability of Abels’ groups $\textbf {A}_n(R) \leq \operatorname {\textrm {GL}}_n(R)$ in terms of n and $\textbf {B}_2^{\circ }(R)$. This generalizes earlier results due to Remeslennikov, Holz, Lyul’ko, Cornulier–Tessera, and points out to a conjecture about the finiteness length of such groups.

In 1978, Yu. F. Borisov presented an axiom system using a few basic assumptions and four explicit axioms, the fourth being a formulation of the relativity principle, and he demonstrated that this axiom system had (up to choice of units) only two models: a relativistic one in which worldview transformations are Poincaré transformations and a classical one in which they are Galilean. In this paper, we reformulate Borisov’s original four axioms within an intuitively simple, but strictly formal, first-order logic framework, and convert his basic background assumptions into explicit axioms. Instead of assuming that the structure of physical quantities is the field of real numbers, we assume only that they form an ordered field. This allows us to investigate how Borisov’s theorem depends on the structure of quantities.

We demonstrate (as our main contribution) how to construct Euclidean, Galilean, and Poincaré models of Borisov’s axiom system over every non-Archimedean field. We also demonstrate the existence of an infinite descending chain of models and transformation groups in each of these three cases, something that is not possible over Archimedean fields.

As an application, we note that there is a model of Borisov’s axioms that satisfies the relativity principle, and in which the worldview transformations are Euclidean isometries. Over the field of reals it is easy to eliminate this model using natural axioms concerning time’s arrow and the absence of instantaneous motion. In the case of non-Archimedean fields, however, the Euclidean isometries appear intrinsically as worldview transformations in models of Borisov’s axioms, and neither the assumption of time’s arrow, nor the rejection of instantaneous motion, can eliminate them.

Let G be a reductive p-adic group which splits over an unramified extension of the ground field. Hiraga, Ichino and Ikeda [24] conjectured that the formal degree of a square-integrable G-representation $\pi $ can be expressed in terms of the adjoint $\gamma $-factor of the enhanced L-parameter of $\pi $. A similar conjecture was posed for the Plancherel densities of tempered irreducible G-representations.

We prove these conjectures for unipotent G-representations. We also derive explicit formulas for the involved adjoint $\gamma $-factors.

In this note, we compute the centers of the categories of tilting modules for G = SL2 in prime characteristic, of tilting modules for the corresponding quantum group at a complex root of unity, and of projective GgT-modules when g = 1, 2.

We determine the smallest irreducible Brauer characters for finite quasi-simple orthogonal type groups in non-defining characteristic. Under some restrictions on the characteristic we also prove a gap result showing that the next larger irreducible Brauer characters have a degree roughly the square of those of the smallest non-trivial characters.

Soient K un corps discrètement valué et hensélien, ${\mathcal {O}}$ son anneau d’entiers supposé excellent, $\kappa $ son corps résiduel supposé parfait et G un K-groupe quasi-réductif, c’est-à-dire lisse, affine, connexe et à radical unipotent déployé trivial. On construit l’immeuble de Bruhat-Tits ${\mathcal {I}}(G, K)$ pour $G(K)$ de façon canonique, améliorant les constructions moins canoniques de M. Solleveld sur les corps locaux, et l’on associe un ${\mathcal {O}}$-modèle en groupes ${\mathcal {G}}_{\Omega }$ de G à chaque partie non vide et bornée $\Omega $ contenue dans un appartement de ${\mathcal {I}}(G,K)$. On montre que les groupes parahoriques ${\mathcal {G}}_{\textbf {f}}$ attachés aux facettes peuvent être caractérisés en fonction de la géométrie de leurs grassmanniennes affines, ainsi que dans la thèse de T. Richarz. Ces résultats sont appliqués ailleurs à l’étude des grassmanniennes affines tordues entières.

We say that a group G of local (maybe formal) biholomorphisms satisfies the uniform intersection property if the intersection multiplicity $(\phi (V), W)$ takes only finitely many values as a function of G for any choice of analytic sets V and W of complementary dimension. In dimension $2$ we show that G satisfies the uniform intersection property if and only if it is finitely determined – that is, if there exists a natural number k such that different elements of G have different Taylor expansions of degree k at the origin. We also prove that G is finitely determined if and only if the action of G on the space of germs of analytic curves has discrete orbits.

We investigate qualitative properties of the underlying scheme of Rapoport–Zink formal moduli spaces of p-divisible groups (resp., shtukas). We single out those cases where the dimension of this underlying scheme is zero (resp., those where the dimension is the maximal possible). The model case for the first alternative is the Lubin–Tate moduli space, and the model case for the second alternative is the Drinfeld moduli space. We exhibit a complete list in both cases.

We give a construction that takes a simple linear algebraic group G over a field and produces a commutative, unital, and simple non-associative algebra A over that field. Two attractions of this construction are that (1) when G has type $E_8$, the algebra A is obtained by adjoining a unit to the 3875-dimensional representation; and (2) it is effective, in that the product operation on A can be implemented on a computer. A description of the algebra in the $E_8$ case has been requested for some time, and interest has been increased by the recent proof that $E_8$ is the full automorphism group of that algebra. The algebras obtained by our construction have an unusual Peirce spectrum.

These notes provide a concise introduction to the representation theory of reductive algebraic groups in positive characteristic, with an emphasis on Lusztig's character formula and geometric representation theory. They are based on the first author's notes from a lecture series delivered by the second author at the Simons Centre for Geometry and Physics in August 2019. We intend them to complement more detailed treatments.

We investigate families of minimal rational curves on Schubert varieties, their Bott–Samelson desingularizations, and their generalizations constructed by Nicolas Perrin in the minuscule case. In particular, we describe the minimal families on small resolutions of minuscule Schubert varieties.

In this article we establish the arithmetic purity of strong approximation for certain semisimple simply connected linear algebraic groups and their homogeneous spaces over a number field $k$. For instance, for any such group $G$ and for any open subset $U$ of $G$ with ${\mathrm {codim}}(G\setminus U, G)\geqslant 2$, we prove that (i) if $G$ is $k$-simple and $k$-isotropic, then $U$ satisfies strong approximation off any finite number of places; and (ii) if $G$ is the spin group of a non-degenerate quadratic form which is not compact over archimedean places, then $U$ satisfies strong approximation off all archimedean places. As a consequence, we prove that the same property holds for affine quadratic hypersurfaces. Our approach combines a fibration method with subgroup actions developed for induction on the codimension of $G\setminus U$, and an affine linear sieve which allows us to produce integral points with almost-prime polynomial values.

Let G be a reductive algebraic group—possibly non-connected—over a field k, and let H be a subgroup of G. If $G= {GL }_n$, then there is a degeneration process for obtaining from H a completely reducible subgroup $H'$ of G; one takes a limit of H along a cocharacter of G in an appropriate sense. We generalise this idea to arbitrary reductive G using the notion of G-complete reducibility and results from geometric invariant theory over non-algebraically closed fields due to the authors and Herpel. Our construction produces a G-completely reducible subgroup $H'$ of G, unique up to $G(k)$-conjugacy, which we call a k-semisimplification of H. This gives a single unifying construction that extends various special cases in the literature (in particular, it agrees with the usual notion for $G= GL _n$ and with Serre’s ‘G-analogue’ of semisimplification for subgroups of $G(k)$ from [19]). We also show that under some extra hypotheses, one can pick $H'$ in a more canonical way using the Tits Centre Conjecture for spherical buildings and/or the theory of optimal destabilising cocharacters introduced by Hesselink, Kempf, and Rousseau.

Let A be a two-dimensional abelian variety defined over a number field K. Fix a prime number $\ell $ and suppose $\#A({\mathbf {F}_{\mathfrak {p}}}) \equiv 0 \pmod {\ell ^2}$ for a set of primes ${\mathfrak {p}} \subset {\mathcal {O}_{K}}$ of density 1. When $\ell =2$ Serre has shown that there does not necessarily exist a K-isogenous $A'$ such that $\#A'(K)_{{tor}} \equiv 0 \pmod {4}$. We extend those results to all odd $\ell $ and classify the abelian varieties that fail this divisibility principle for torsion in terms of the image of the mod-$\ell ^2$ representation.

In this paper, we analyze Fourier coefficients of automorphic forms on a finite cover G of an adelic split simply-laced group. Let $\pi $ be a minimal or next-to-minimal automorphic representation of G. We prove that any $\eta \in \pi $ is completely determined by its Whittaker coefficients with respect to (possibly degenerate) characters of the unipotent radical of a fixed Borel subgroup, analogously to the Piatetski-Shapiro–Shalika formula for cusp forms on $\operatorname {GL}_n$. We also derive explicit formulas expressing the form, as well as all its maximal parabolic Fourier coefficient, in terms of these Whittaker coefficients. A consequence of our results is the nonexistence of cusp forms in the minimal and next-to-minimal automorphic spectrum. We provide detailed examples for G of type $D_5$ and $E_8$ with a view toward applications to scattering amplitudes in string theory.

For an integer $n\geq 8$ divisible by $4$, let $R_n={\mathbb Z}[\zeta _n,1/2]$ and let $\operatorname {\mathrm {U_{2}}}(R_n)$ be the group of $2\times 2$ unitary matrices with entries in $R_n$. Set $\operatorname {\mathrm {U_2^\zeta }}(R_n)=\{\gamma \in \operatorname {\mathrm {U_{2}}}(R_n)\mid \det \gamma \in \langle \zeta _n\rangle \}$. Let $\mathcal {G}_n\subseteq \operatorname {\mathrm {U_2^\zeta }}(R_n)$ be the Clifford-cyclotomic group generated by a Hadamard matrix $H=\frac {1}{2}[\begin {smallmatrix} 1+i & 1+i\\1+i &-1-i\end {smallmatrix}]$and the gate $T_n=[\begin {smallmatrix}1 & 0\\0 & \zeta _n\end {smallmatrix}]$. We prove that $\mathcal {G}_n=\operatorname {\mathrm {U_2^\zeta }}(R_n)$ if and only if $n=8, 12, 16, 24$ and that $[\operatorname {\mathrm {U_2^\zeta }}(R_n):\mathcal {G}_n]=\infty $ if $\operatorname {\mathrm {U_2^\zeta }}(R_n)\neq \mathcal {G}_n$. We compute the Euler–Poincaré characteristic of the groups $\operatorname {\mathrm {SU_{2}}}(R_n)$, $\operatorname {\mathrm {PSU_{2}}}(R_n)$, $\operatorname {\mathrm {PU_{2}}}(R_n)$, $\operatorname {\mathrm {PU_2^\zeta }}(R_n)$, and $\operatorname {\mathrm {SO_{3}}}(R_n^+)$.

Suppose that $G$ is a simple reductive group over $\mathbf{Q}$, with an exceptional Dynkin type and with $G(\mathbf{R})$ quaternionic (in the sense of Gross–Wallach). In a previous paper, we gave an explicit form of the Fourier expansion of modular forms on $G$ along the unipotent radical of the Heisenberg parabolic. In this paper, we give the Fourier expansion of the minimal modular form $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}_{Gan}$ on quaternionic $E_{8}$ and some applications. The $Sym^{8}(V_{2})$-valued automorphic function $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}_{Gan}$ is a weight 4, level one modular form on $E_{8}$, which has been studied by Gan. The applications we give are the construction of special modular forms on quaternionic $E_{7},E_{6}$ and $G_{2}$. We also discuss a family of degenerate Heisenberg Eisenstein series on the groups $G$, which may be thought of as an analogue to the quaternionic exceptional groups of the holomorphic Siegel Eisenstein series on the groups $\operatorname{GSp}_{2n}$.

Generalised quantum determinantal rings are the analogue in quantum matrices of Schubert varieties. Maximal orders are the noncommutative version of integrally closed rings. In this paper, we show that generalised quantum determinantal rings are maximal orders. The cornerstone of the proof is a description of generalised quantum determinantal rings, up to a localisation, as skew polynomial extensions.