English

Centralizers and conjugacy classes in finite classical groups

Group Theory 2020-08-31 v1

Abstract

Let C\mathscr{C} be a classical group defined over a finite field. We present comprehensive theoretical solutions to the following closely related problems: 1) List a representative for each conjugacy class of C\mathscr{C}. 2) Given xCx \in \mathscr{C}, describe the centralizer CC(x)C_{\mathscr{C}}(x) of xx in C\mathscr{C}, by giving its group structure and a generating set. 3) Given x,yCx,y \in \mathscr{C}, establish whether xx and yy are conjugate in C\mathscr{C} and, if they are, find explicit zCz \in \mathscr{C} such that z1xz=yz^{-1}xz = y. We also formulate practical algorithms to solve these problems and have implemented them in Magma.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2008.12651,
  title  = {Centralizers and conjugacy classes in finite classical groups},
  author = {Giovanni De Franceschi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2008.12651},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

77 pages, 0 figures, part of PhD thesis under the supervision of Jianbei An and Eamonn O'Brien

R2 v1 2026-06-23T18:09:57.157Z