G-Complexes and Equivariant Cohomology

Weights for symmetric and general linear groups

Major progress in group theory occurred in the nineteenth century but the evolution of group theory began already in the latter part of 18th century. Some characteristic features of 19th century mathematics which had crucial impact on this evolution are concern for rigor and abstraction and the view that mathematics is a human activity without necessarily referring to physical situations. In 1770, Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736-1813) wrote his seminal memoir Reflections on the solution of algebraic equations. He considered ‘abstract’ questions like whether every equation has a root and, if so, how many were real/complex/positive/negative? The problem of algebraically solving 5th degree equations was a major preoccupation (right from the 17th century) to which Lagrange lent his major efforts in this paper. His beautiful idea (now going under the name of Lagrange’s resolvent) is to ‘reduce’ a general equation to auxiliary (resolvent) equations which have one degree less. Later, the theory of finite abelian groups evolved from Carl Friedrich Gauss’s famous “Disquisitiones Arithmeticae”. Gauss (1777-1855) established many of the important properties though he did not use the terminology of group theory. In his work, finite abelian groups4 Math Unlimitedappeared in different forms like the additive group Zn of integers modulo n, the multiplicative group Z∗n of integers modulo n relatively prime to n, the group of equivalence classes of binary quadratic forms, and the group of n-th roots of unity. In 1872, Felix Klein delivered a famous lecture A Comparative Review of Recent Researches in Geometry. The aim of his (so-called) Erlangen Program was the classification of geometry as the study of invariants under various groups of transformations. So, the groups appear here “geometrically” as groups of rigid motions, of similarities, or as the hyperbolic group etc. During the analysis of the connections between the different geometries, the focus was on the study of properties of figures invariant under transformations. Soon after, the focus shifted to a study of the transformations themselves. Thus the study of the geometric relations between figures got converted to the study of the associated transformations. In 1874, Sophus Lie introduced his “theory of continuous transformation groups” what we basically call Lie groups today. Poincaré and Klein began their work on the so-called automorphic functions and the groups associated with them around 1876. Automorphic functions are generalizations of the circular, hyperbolic, elliptic, and other functions of elementary analysis. They are functions of a complex variable z, analytic in some domain, and invariant under the group of transformations x′ = ax+b(a, b, c, d real or complex and ad − bc 0), or under some subgroup of this group. We end this introduction with the ancient problem of finding all those positive integers (called congruent numbers) which are areas of right-angled triangles with rational sides. To this date, the general result describing all of them precisely is not proved. However, the problem can be re-stated in terms of certain groups called elliptic curves and this helps in getting a hold on the problem and in obtaining several partial results. Indeed, if n is a positive integer, then the rational numbers x, y satisfying y2 = x3 − n2x form a group law which can be described geometrically. Then, n is a congruent number if and only if, this group is infinite!

Finite Groups With Many Conjugate Elements

Variants of some of the Brauer-Fowler theorems

Equivariant uniform Alexander-Spanier cohomology theory

We show that every action of a finite dihedral group on a closed orientable surface F \mathcal F extends to a 3-dimensional handlebody V \mathcal V , with ∂ V = F \partial \mathcal V=\mathcal F . In the case of a finite abelian group G G , we give necessary and sufficient conditions for a G G -action on a surface to extend to a compact 3 3 -manifold, or, equivalently in this case, to a 3-dimensional handlebody; in particular all (fixed-point) free actions of finite abelian groups extend to handlebodies. This is no longer true for free actions of arbitrary finite groups: we give a procedure which allows us to construct free actions of finite groups on surfaces which do not extend to a handlebody. We also show that the unique Hurwitz action of order 84 ( g − 1 ) 84(g-1) of P S L ( 2 , 27 ) PSL(2,27) on a surface F \mathcal F of genus g = 118 g=118 does not extend to any compact 3-manifold M M with ∂ M = F \partial M=\mathcal F , thus resolving the only case of Hurwitz actions of type P S L ( 2 , q ) PSL(2,q) of low order which remained open in an earlier paper (Math. Proc. Cambridge Philos. Soc. 117 (1995), 137–151).

1.1. Let G be a connected reductive algebraic group defined over a finite (prime) field Fp of p elements. For a given rational G-module M one can consider the restrictions of M to the restricted Lie algebra Lie(G) and to the finite group G(Fp) of Fp-rational points. Even though there is no direct functorial connection between the categories of restricted Lie(G)-modules and G(Fp)-modules, the ambient algebraic group G can serve as a bridge linking these two important module categories. Early results of Curtis in the 1960s provided a one-to-one correspondence between the simple restricted modules (over k = Fp) of Lie(G) and those of G(Fp). This correspondence is given by simply restricting certain classes of simple G-modules. More importantly, these results, along with work of Steinberg, allow one to easily transfer the questions pertaining to the computation of irreducible characters among these three categories. For over thirty years, this approach has been one of the main ideas used to relate the representation and cohomology theory of algebraic groups, Lie algebras, and finite groups of Lie type (in the defining characteristic) (see, e.g., [CPSvan], [Jan2], [Hum3], and [Jan1]). Given the previous results in this area, a natural course of investigation should be to find relationships between canonical modules, like projective modules, for Lie(G) and G(Fp). More precisely,

A computational method for determining the automorphism group of a finite solvable group

Terms like commutativity degree, non-commuting graph and isoclinism are far well-known for much of the group theorists nowadays. There are so many papers about each of these concepts and also about their relationships in finite groups. Also, there are some recent researches about generalizing these notions in finite rings and their connexions.The concepts of commutativity degree and non-commuting graph are also extended to non-associative structures such as Moufang loops and some part of the known results in group theory in these contexts have been expanded to them.In this paper, we are going to generalize the notion of isoclinism in finite Moufang loops and then study the relationships between these three concepts. Among other results, we prove that two isoclinic finite Moufang loops have the same commutativity degree and if they have the same sizes of centers and commutants then they have isomorphic non-commuting graphs. Also, the converses of these results have been investigated.Furthermore, it has been proved that a finite simple group can be characterized by its non-commuting graph. We will prove the same is true for a finite simple Moufang loop by imposing one additional hypothesis, namely, the isoclinism of the regarding loops.

The aim of the workshop was to give a panoramic view of the main lines of research on various aspects of growth and expansion in finite groups. The main topics included: diameter bounds for Cayley graphs of alternating and classical groups, with results for generating sets that can be arbitrary, random, or containing special elements; constructions of expander families of finite simple groups, with the use of property (T); and character bounds for finite simple groups, yielding applications to word map problems and random walks on Cayley graphs. A series of smaller topics explored connections and similarities to different problems in group theory.

For a finite group $H$‎, ‎let $cs(H)$ denote the set of non-trivial conjugacy class sizes of $H$ and $OC(H)$ be the set of the order components of $H$‎. ‎In this paper‎, ‎we show that if $S$ is a finite simple group with the disconnected prime graph and $G$ is a finite group such that $cs(S)=cs(G)$‎, ‎then $|S|=|G/Z(G)|$ and $OC(S)=OC(G/Z(G))$‎. ‎In particular‎, ‎we show that for some finite simple group $S$‎, ‎$G cong S times Z(G)$‎.

Let K be a commutative noetherian ring. It is proved that a representation of a finite group on a K-module of finite length or on a K-module of finite exponent has a finite basis for its identities. In particular, this implies an earlier result of Nguyen Hung Shon and the author stating that every representation of a finite group over a field is finitely based. The problem whether every representation of a finite group over a commutative noetherian ring is finitely based still remains open.

Weakly group-theoretical and solvable fusion categories

The representation theory of finite groups began with the pioneering research of Frobenius, Burnside, and Schur at the turn of the century. Their work was inspired in part by two largely unrelated developments which occurred earlier in the nineteenth century. The first was the awareness of characters of finite abelian groups and their application by some of the great nineteenth-century number theorists. The second was the emergence of the structure theory of finite groups, beginning with Galois’ brief outline of the main ideas in the famous letter written on the eve of his death and continuing with the work of Sylow and others, including Frobenius himself.

In this survey, we discuss some basic problems in representation theory of finite groups, including some long-standing conjectures of Alperin, Brauer, and others. A possible approach to some of these problems is to use the classification of finite simple groups to reduce the problem in consideration to some, more specific, questions about simple groups. We will describe recent progress on reduction theorems in this direction. We will also outline applications of these results to various problems in group theory, number theory, and algebraic geometry.