We prove an analogue of the celebrated Hall-Higman theorem, which gives a lower bound for the degree of the minimal polynomial of any semisimple element of prime power order $p^{a}$ of a finite classical group in any nontrivial irreducible cross characteristic representation. With a few explicit exceptions, this degree is at least $p^{a-1}(p-1)$.
We prove that the closure of every Jordan class J in a semisimple simply connected complex group G at a point x with Jordan decomposition x = rv is smoothly equivalent to the union of closures of those Jordan classes in the centraliser of r that are contained in J and contain x in their closure. For x unipotent we also show that the closure of J around x is smoothly equivalent to the closure of a Jordan class in Lie(G) around exp^{-1}x. For G simple we apply these results in order to determine a (non-exhaustive) list of smooth sheets in G, the complete list of regular Jordan classes whose closure is normal and Cohen-Macaulay, and to prove that all sheets and Lusztigs strata in SL(n,C) are smooth.
We introduce a notion of measure contracting actions and show that Koopman representations corresponding to ergodic measure contracting actions are irreducible. As a corollary we obtain that Koopman representations associated to canonical actions of Higman-Thompson groups are irreducible. We also show that the actions of weakly branch groups on the boundaries of rooted trees are measure contracting. This gives a new point of view on irreducibility of the corresponding Koopman representations.
Let $q$ be a power of a prime $p$, let $G$ be a finite Chevalley group over $mathbb{F}_q$ and let $U$ be a Sylow $p$-subgroup of $G$; we assume that $p$ is not a very bad prime for $G$. We explain a procedure of reduction of irreducible complex characters of $U$, which leads to an algorithm whose goal is to obtain a parametrization of the irreducible characters of $U$ along with a means to construct these characters as induced characters. A focus in this paper is determining the parametrization when $G$ is of type $mathrm{F}_4$, where we observe that the parametrization is uniform over good primes $p > 3$, but differs for the bad prime $p = 3$. We also explain how it has been applied for all groups of rank $4$ or less.
We calculate the Plancherel formula for complex semisimple quantum groups, that is, Drinfeld doubles of $ q $-deformations of compact semisimple Lie groups. As a consequence we obtain a concrete description of their associated reduced group $ C^* $-algebras. The main ingredients in our proof are the Bernstein-Gelfand-Gelfand complex and the Hopf trace formula.
In this paper we study the Gan-Gross-Prasad problem for finite classical groups. Our results provide complete answers for unipotent representations, and we obtain the explicit branching laws for these representations. Moreover, for arbitrary representations, we give a formula to reduce the Gan-Gross-Prasad problem to the restriction problem of Deligne-Lusztig characters.