English

$G$-complete reducibility and saturation

Representation Theory 2025-04-28 v6 Group Theory

Abstract

Let HGH \subseteq G be connected reductive linear algebraic groups defined over an algebraically closed field of characteristic p>0p> 0. In our first main theorem we show that if a closed subgroup KK of HH is HH-completely reducible, then it is also GG-completely reducible in the sense of Serre, under some restrictions on pp, generalising the known case for G=GL(V)G = GL(V). Our proof uses R.W. Richardson's notion of reductive pairs to reduce to the GL(V)GL(V) case. We study Serre's notion of saturation and prove that saturation behaves well with respect to products and regular subgroups. Our second main theorem shows that if KK is HH-completely reducible, then the saturation of KK in GG is completely reducible in the saturation of HH in GG (which is again a connected reductive subgroup of GG), under suitable restrictions on pp, again generalising the known instance for G=GL(V)G = GL(V). We also study saturation of finite subgroups of Lie type in GG. We show that saturation is compatible with standard Frobenius endomorphisms, and we use this to generalise a result due to Nori from 1987 in case G=GL(V)G = GL(V).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2401.16927,
  title  = {$G$-complete reducibility and saturation},
  author = {Michael Bate and Sören Böhm and Alastair Litterick and Benjamin Martin and Gerhard Roehrle},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.16927},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

15 pages; v2 minor changes; v3 18 pages, various changes; new is Proposition 4.8 which shows that saturation is compatible with standard Frobenius endomorphisms; v4, 19 pages, introduction rewritten, substantial reorganization of material; v5, minor changes following referee's suggestion; final version to appear in PJM; v6 minor changes to conform with published version, bibliographic updates

R2 v1 2026-06-28T14:31:37.278Z