Non-abelian Littlewood-Offord inequalities

In 1943, Littlewood and Offord proved the first anti-concentration result for sums of independent random variables. Their result has since then been strengthened and generalized by generations of researchers, with applications in several areas of mathematics. In this paper, we present the first non-abelian analogue of Littlewood-Offord result, a sharp anti-concentration inequality for products of independent random variables.

Conjugacy action, induced representations and the Steinberg square for simple groups of Lie type

Let $G$ be a finite simple group of Lie type, and let $pi_G$ be the permutation representation of $G$ associated with the action of $G$ on itself by conjugation. We prove that every irreducible representation of $G$ is a constituent of $pi_G$, unless $G=PSU_n(q)$ and $n$ is coprime to $2(q+1)$, where precisely one irreducible representation fails. Let St be the Steinberg representation of $G$. We prove that a complex irreducible representation of $G$ is a constituent of the tensor square $Stotimes St$, with the same exceptions as in the previous statement.

Small-dimensional projective representations of symmetric and alternating groups

We classify the irreducible projective representations of symmetric and alternating groups of minimal possible and second minimal possible dimensions, and get a lower bound for the third minimal dimension. On the way we obtain some new results on branching which might be of independent interest.

Representations of the general linear groups which are irreducible over subgroups

We classify all triples $(G,V,H)$ such that $SL_n(q)leq Gleq GL_n(q)$, $V$ is a representation of $G$ of dimension greater than one over an algebraically closed field $FF$ of characteristic coprime to $q$, and $H$ is a proper subgroup of $G$ such that the restriction $Vdar_{H}$ is irreducible. This problem is a natural part of the Aschbacher-Scott program on maximal subgroups of finite classical groups.

Hall-Higman type theorems for semisimple elements of finite classical groups

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 $p^{a-1}(p-1)$.

Symmetric powers and a problem of Kollar and Larsen

We prove a conjecture of Kollar and Larsen on Zariski closed subgroups of $GL(V)$ which act irreducibly on some symmetric power $Sym^{k}(V)$ with $k geq 4$. This conjecture has interesting implications, in particular on the holonomy group of a stable vector bundle on a smooth projective variety, as shown by the recent work of Balaji and Kollar.