Related papers: On Higman's $k(U_n(\mathbb{F}_q))$ conjecture

An unresolved conjecture by Graham Higman states that for all $n\geq 1$ the number of conjugacy classes of the group of $n \times n$ unitriangular matrices with entries in the finite field $\mathbb{F}_q$ is a polynomial in $q$. In this…

Let G(q) be a finite Chevalley group, where q is a power of a good prime p, and let U(q) be a Sylow p-subgroup of G(q). Then a generalized version of a conjecture of Higman asserts that the number k(U(q)) of conjugacy classes in U(q) is…

A conjecture by Higman asserts that the number of conjugacy classes in the unipotent group of upper triangular matrices over a finite field depends polynomially on the number of elements of the field. We will study several alternative…

We provide a new upper bound on the number of conjugacy classes in the group $U_n(q)$ of unitriangular matrices over a finite field. We also compute a similar upper bound for every group in the lower central series of $U_n(q)$.

Let $q$ be a prime power, $G=GL_n(q)$ and let $U\leqslant G$ be the subgroup of (lower) unitriangular matrices in $G$. For a partition $\lambda$ of $n$ denote the corresponding unipotent Specht module over the complex field $\C$ for $G$ by…

This paper is devoted to the theory of $GL_n({\mathbb Z})$-conjugacy classes of regular integer $n\times n$ matrices. Such a matrix is $GL_n({\mathbb Q})$-conjugate to the companion matrix of its characteristic polynomial. But the set of…

Let $U_n$ denote the group of upper $n \times n$ unitriangular matrices over a fixed finite field $\mathbb{F}$ of order $q$. That is, $U_n$ consists of upper triangular $n \times n$ matrices having every diagonal entry equal to $1$. It is…

An introduction to the universal algebra approach to Higman-Thompson groups (including Thompson's group $V$) is given, following a series of lectures by Graham Higman in 1973. In these talks, Higman outlined an algorithm for the conjugacy…

Given a group $G$ we write $h(G)$ to denote the maximum number of times that a field extension of $\mathbb{Q}$ appears as the field of values of a conjugacy class of a group. In this work, we prove that $|G|$ is bounded in terms of $h(G)$.…

Describing the conjugacy classes of the unipotent upper triangular groups $\mathrm{UT}_{n}(\mathbb{F}_{q})$ uniformly (for all or many values of $n$ and $q$) is a nearly impossible task. This paper takes on the related problem of describing…

The $G$-representation variety $R_G(\Sigma_g)$ parametrizes the representations of the fundamental groups of surfaces $\pi_1(\Sigma_g)$ into an algebraic group $G$. Taking $G$ to be the groups of $n \times n$ upper triangular or unipotent…

Let $q$ be a power of a prime $p$. Let $P$ be a parabolic subgroup of the general linear group $\GL_n(q)$ that is the stabilizer of a flag in $\FF_q^n$ of length at most 5, and let $U = O_p(P)$. In this note we prove that, as a function of…

In 1951, Higman constructed a remarkable group $$H=\left\langle a,b,c,d \, \left| \, b^a = b^2, c^b = c^2, d^c = d^2, a^d = a^2 \right. \right\rangle$$ and used it to produce the first examples of infinite simple groups. By studying fixed…

This paper concerns the enumeration of simultaneous conjugacy classes of $k$-tuples of commuting matrices in the upper triangular group $GT_n(\mathbf F_q)$ and unitriangular group $UT_m(\mathbf F_q)$ over the finite field $\mathbf F_q$ of…

We show that for any $n$ and $q$, the number of real conjugacy classes in $\mathrm{PGL}(n, \mathbb{F}_q)$ is equal to the number of real conjugacy classes of $\mathrm{GL}(n, \mathbb{F}_q)$ which are contained in $\mathrm{SL}(n,…

Let $\bfG$ be a connected reductive algebraic group defined over $\F_q$, where $q$ is a power of a prime $p$ that is good for $\bfG$. Let $F$ be the Frobenius morphism associated with the $\FF_q$-structure on $\bfG$ and set $G = \bfG^F$,…

Let J be a finite-dimensional nilpotent algebra over a finite field F_q. We formulate a procedure for analysing characters of the group 1+J. In particular, we study characters of the group $U_n (q)$ of unipotent triangular $n\times n$…

A conjecture of Odoni stated over Hilbertian fields $K$ of characteristic zero asserts that for every positive integer $d$, there exists a polynomial $f\in K[x]$ of degree $d$ such that for every positive integer $n$, each iterate $f^{\circ…

Let $G$ be a connected reductive algebraic group defined over the finite field $\FF_q$, where $q$ is a power of a good prime for $G$. We write $F$ for the Frobenius morphism of $G$ corresponding to the $\FF_q$-structure, so that $G^F$ is a…

Let $U$ be an algebraic subgroup of the group of $n\times n$ upper-triangular matrices with units on the diagonal over a finite field of large enough characteristic, and $\mathfrak{n}$ be the Lie algebra of $U$. The main tool in…