Related papers: On involutions and indicators of finite orthogonal…

We prove that if $G$ is a finite simple group, then all irreducible complex representations of $G$ by be realized over the real numbers if and only if every element of $G$ may be written as a product of two involutions in $G$. This follows…

Answering a question of Geoff Robinson, we compute the large n limiting proportion of i(n,q)/q^[n^2/2], where i(n,q) denotes the number of involutions in GL(n,q). We give similar results for the finite unitary, symplectic, and orthogonal…

We prove several reality properties for finite simple orthogonal groups. For any prime power $q$ and $m\geq 1$, we show that all real conjugacy classes are strongly real in the simple groups $\mathrm{P}\Omega^{\pm}(4m+2,q), m \geq 1$,…

The classical Frobenius-Schur indicators for finite groups are character sums defined for any representation and any integer m greater or equal to 2. In the familiar case m=2, the Frobenius-Schur indicator partitions the irreducible…

We consider the Chevalley involution in the context of real reductive groups. We show that if G(R) is the real points of a connected reductive group, there is an involution, unique up to conjugacy by G(R), taking any semisimple element to a…

We prove that when $q$ is a power of $2$, every complex irreducible representation of $\mathrm{Sp}(2n, \mathbb{F}_q)$ may be defined over the real numbers, that is, all Frobenius-Schur indicators are 1. We also obtain a generating function…

Let $G$ be a finite permutation group of degree $n$ and let ${\rm ifix}(G)$ be the involution fixity of $G$, which is the maximum number of fixed points of an involution. In this paper we study the involution fixity of almost simple…

It is well-known that the value of the Frobenius-Schur indicator $|G|^{-1} \sum_{g\in G} \chi(g^2)=\pm1$ of a real irreducible representation of a finite group $G$ determines which of the two types of real representations it belongs to,…

We classify all strongly real conjugacy classes of the finite unitary group $\U(n, F_q)$ when $q$ is odd. In particular, we show that $g \in \U(n, F_q)$ is strongly real if and only if $g$ is an element of some embedded orthogonal group…

Let $W$ be a finite Weyl group and $\sg$ be a non-trivial graph automorphism of $W$. We show a remarkable relation between the $\sg$-twisted involution module for $W$ and the Frobenius--Schur indicators of the unipotent characters of a…

Let $W$ be an $n$-dimensional vector space over a finite field $\mathbb{F}_q$ of any characteristic and $mW$ denote the direct sum of $m$ copies of $W$. Let $\mathbb{F}_q[mW]^{{\rm GL}(W)}$ and $\mathbb{F}_q(mW)^{{\rm GL}(W)}$ denote the…

The goal of invariant theory is to find all the generators for the algebra of representations of a group that leave the group invariant. Such generators will be called \emph{basic invariants}. In particular, we set out to find the set of…

Working over an algebraically closed base field $k$ of characteristic 2, the ring of invariants $R^G$ is studied, where $G$ is the orthogonal group O(n) or the special orthogonal group SO(n), acting naturally on the coordinate ring $R$ of…

For $\mathrm{O}(\mathrm{q},k)$, the orthogonal group over a field $k$ of characteristic 2 with respect to a quadratic form $\mathrm{q}$, we discuss the isomorphism classes of fixed points of involutions. When the quadratic space is either…

By computing Frobenius-Schur indicators of modules of certain weak Hopf algebras, we give a formula for the number of involutions in symmetric groups, which are contained in a given coset with respect to a given Young subgroup.

Brauer and Fowler noted restrictions on the structure of a finite group G in terms of the order of the centralizer of an involution t in G. We consider variants of these themes. We first note that for an arbitrary finite group G of even…

We consider elements of finite order in the Riordan group $\cal R$ over a field of characteristic $0$. Viewing $\cal R$ as a semi-direct product of groups of formal power series, we solve, for all $n \geq 2$, two foundational questions…

We present a method to explicitly compute a complete set of orthogonal primitive idempotents in a simple component with Schur index 1 of a rational group algebra $\mathbb{Q}G$ for $G$ a finite generalized strongly monomial group. For the…

We study `good elements' in finite $2n$-dimensional classical groups $G$: namely $t$ is a `good element' if $o(t)$ is divisible by a primitive prime divisor of $q^n-1$ for the relevant field order $q$, and $t$ fixes pointwise an $n$-space.…

This article proves a version of the Feit-Thompson theorem for simple groups of finite Morley rank: a connected groups of finite Morley rank with a finite Sylow 2-subgroup has a trivial Sylow 2-subgroups.