Related papers: Cartan matrices and Brauer's k(B)-Conjecture IV

For a block $B$ of a finite group we prove that $k(B)\le(\det C-1)/l(B)+l(B)\le\det C$ where $k(B)$ (respectively $l(B)$) is the number of irreducible ordinary (respectively Brauer) characters of $B$, and $C$ is the Cartan matrix of $B$. As…

We study Brauer's long-standing $k(B)$-conjecture on the number of characters in $p$-blocks for finite quasi-simple groups and show that their blocks do not occur as a minimal counterexample for $p\ge5$ nor in the case of abelian defect.…

Recently, a new conjecture on the degrees of the irreducible Brauer characters of a finite group was presented by the second author. In this paper we propose a 'local' version of this conjecture for blocks B of finite groups, giving a lower…

Suppose that $B$ is a Brauer $p$-block with defect group $D$. If $B$ exactly contains 4 irreducible characters, then we show that $D$ has order 4 or 5, assuming the Alperin--McKay conjecture.

Let $G$ be a finite group, $p$ a prime and $B$ a Brauer $p$-block of $G$ with defect group $D$. We prove that if the number of irreducible ordinary characters in $B$ is $5$ then $D\cong C_5, C_7, D_8$ or $Q_8$, assuming that the…

We show (among other things) that Brauer's k(B)-conjecture holds for defect groups with are central extensions of metacyclic 2-groups by cyclic groups. The same holds for defect groups which contain a central cyclic subgroup of index at…

We present a strong upper bound on the number k(B) of irreducible characters of a p-block B of a finite group G in terms of local invariants. More precisely, the bound depends on a chosen major B-subsection (u,b), its normalizer N_G(\langle…

We prove Brauer's k(B)-Conjecture for the 3-blocks with abelian defect groups of rank at most 5 and for all 3-blocks of defect at most 4. For this purpose we develop a computer algorithm to construct isotypies based on a method of Usami and…

We prove that the number of irreducible ordinary characters in the principal $p$-block of a finite group $G$ of order divisible by $p$ is always at least $2\sqrt{p-1}$. This confirms a conjecture of H\'{e}thelyi and K\"{u}lshammer for…

For a prime $p$, we determine a Sylow $p$-subgroup $D$ of a finite group $G$ such that the principal $p$-block $B$ of $G$ has four irreducible ordinary characters. It has been determined already for the cases where the number is up to three…

Let k(B_0) and l(B_0) respectively denote the number of ordinary and p-Brauer irreducible characters in the principal block B_0 of a finite group G. We prove that, if k(B_0)-l(B_0)=1, then l(B_0)\geq p-1 or else p=11 and l(B_0)=9. This…

In this paper, we prove that a \(p\)-block with abelian defect group is inertial if it covers a \(p\)-block of a normal subgroup of \(p\)-power index having only one irreducible Brauer character orbit.

Slattery has generalized Brauer's theory of p-blocks of finite groups to pi-blocks of pi-separable groups where pi is a set of primes. In this setting we show that the order of a defect group of a pi-block B is bounded in terms of the…

If $G$ is a solvable group and $p$ is a prime, then the Fong-Swan theorem shows that given any irreducible Brauer character $\phi$ of $G$, there exists a character $\chi \in \irrg$ such that $\chi^o = \phi$, where $^o$ denotes the…

Conjecture A of \cite{EM14} predicts the equality between the smallest positive height of the irreducible characters in a $p$-block of a finite group and the smallest positive height of the irreducible characters in its defect group. Hence,…

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…

We prove, for primes $p\ge5$, two inequalities between the fundamental invariants of Brauer $p$-blocks of finite quasi-simple groups: the number of characters in the block, the number of modular characters, the number of height zero…

The longstanding Alperin weight conjecture and its blockwise version have been reduced to simple groups recently by Navarro, Tiep, Spaeth and Koshitani. Thus, to prove this conjecture, it suffices to verify the corresponding inductive…

We prove that Brauer's Height Zero Conjecture holds for p-blocks of finite groups with metacyclic defect groups. If the defect group is nonabelian and contains a cyclic maximal subgroup, we obtain the distribution into p-conjugate and…

We prove that the number of irreducible real characters in a nilpotent block of a finite group is locally determined. We further conjecture that the Frobenius-Schur indicators of those characters can be computed for p=2 in terms of the…