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We propose and present evidence for a conjectural global-local phenomenon concerning the $p$-rationality of $p$-height-zero characters. Specifically, if $\chi$ is a height-zero character of a finite group $G$ and $D$ is a defect group of the $p$-block of $G$ containing $\chi$, then the $p$-rationality of $\chi$ can be captured inside the normalizer $N_G(D)$.

The Eaton--Moret\'o conjecture extends the recently-proven Brauer height zero conjecture to blocks with non-abelian defect group, positing equality between the minimal positive heights of a block of a finite group and its defect group. Here we provide further evidence for the inequality in this conjecture that is not implied by Dade's conjecture. Specifically, we consider minimal counter-examples and show that these cannot be found among almost quasi-simple groups for $p\ge5$. Along the way, we observe that most such blocks have minimal positive height equal to~1.

The celebrated It\^o-Michler theorem asserts that a prime $p$ does not divide the degree of any irreducible character of a finite group $G$ if and only if $G$ has a normal and abelian Sylow $p$-subgroup. The principal block case of the recently-proven Brauer's height zero conjecture isolates the abelian part in the It\^o-Michler theorem. In this paper, we show that the normal part can also be isolated in a similar way. This is a consequence of work on a strong form of the so-called Brauer's height zero conjecture for two primes of Malle and Navarro. Using our techniques, we also provide an alternate proof of this conjecture., Comment: Revised following Gunter Malle's suggestions

We characterize when a finite group G possesses a Sylow 3-subgroup P with abelianization of order 9 in terms of the number of height zero characters lying in the principal 3-block of G, settling a conjecture put forward by Navarro, Sambale, and Tiep in 2018. Along the way, we show that a recent result by Laradji on the number of character of height zero in a block that lie above a given character of some normal subgroup holds, without any hypothesis on the group for blocks of maximal defect., Comment: slight title change and other minor changes, following helpful comments thanks to Gunter Malle and Bejamin Sambale

Recently, Malle and Navarro obtained a Galois strengthening of Brauer's height zero conjecture for principal $p$-blocks when $p=2$, considering a particular Galois automorphism of order~$2$. In this paper, for any prime $p$ we consider a certain elementary abelian $p$-subgroup of the absolute Galois group and propose a Galois version of Brauer's height zero conjecture for principal $p$-blocks. We prove it when $p=2$ and also for arbitrary $p$ when $G$ does not involve certain groups of Lie type of small rank as composition factors. Furthermore, we prove it for almost simple groups and for $p$-solvable groups., Comment: a few minor improvements over version 1

Let p be a prime. In this paper we provide a lower bound for the number of almost p-rational characters of degree coprime to p in the principal p-block of a finite group of order divisible by p. We further describe the p-local structure of the groups for which the above-mentioned bound is sharp., Comment: To appear in Publicacions Matem\`atiques

We show that the Jordan decomposition of characters of finite reductive groups can be chosen so that if the centralizer of the relevant semisimple element in the dual group is connected, then the map is Galois-equivariant. Further, in this situation, we show that there is a unique Jordan decomposition satisfying conditions analogous to those of Digne--Michel's unique Jordan decomposition in the connected center case., Comment: v2, 19 pages, substantial revision, text reordered and shortened in places. Theorem 2.1 a stronger version of previous results, see (6) of the statement, with shorter proof. New results: Proposition 4.3, Lemma 6.1, Theorem 6.2 and Proposition 6.3

Problem 21 of Brauer's list of problems from 1963 asks whether for any positive integer k there are finitely many isomorphism classes of groups that occur as the defect group of a block with k irreducible characters. We solve this problem for principal blocks. Another long-standing open problem (from 1982) in this area asks whether the defect group of a block with 3 irreducible characters is necessarily the cyclic group of order 3. In most cases we reduce this problem to a question on simple groups that is closely related to the recent solution of Brauer's height zero conjecture.

We classify Sylow $p$-subgroups of finite groups whose principal $p$-blocks have precisely six ordinary irreducible characters., Comment: 18 pages, 1 table. The second version includes comments from Gunter Malle

In this note, we prove that if every character of a finite group $G$ fixed by an order-2 Galois automorphism has odd degree, then $G$ has a normal Sylow $2$-subgroup. On the way, we study extensions of characters of $GL_n(q)$, $q$ odd, to the group extended by the transpose-inverse automorphism and prove that unipotent characters of $PSL_n(q)$ extend to rational characters of its automorphism group., Comment: Thm. A, Cor. B, are incorrect as stated and would require additional assumptions on q (a result of a missing assumption in another paper). Withdrawn until I obtain a working solution

We complete the proof of the McKay--Navarro conjecture (also known as the Galois--McKay conjecture) for the prime 2, by completing the proof of the inductive McKay--Navarro conditions introduced by Navarro--Sp\"ath--Vallejo in this situation.

We complete the proof of Brauer's Height Zero Conjecture from 1955 by establishing the open implication for all odd primes., Comment: To appear in Annals of Math

If G is a finite group, we have proposed new conjectures on the interaction between different primes and their corresponding Brauer principal blocks. In this paper, we give strong support to the validity of these conjectures.

A recent question of Gabriel Navarro asks whether it is true that the derived length of a defect group is less than or equal to the number of degrees of irreducible characters in a block. In this article, we bring new evidence towards the validity of this statement., Comment: 23 pages

For a prime $\ell$, the McKay conjecture suggests a bijection between the set of irreducible characters of a finite group with $\ell'$-degree and the corresponding set for the normalizer of a Sylow $\ell$- subgroup. Navarro's refinement suggests that the values of the characters on either side of this bijection should also be related, proposing that the bijection commutes with certain Galois automorphisms. Recently, Navarro--Spaeth--Vallejo have reduced the McKay--Navarro conjecture to certain "inductive" conditions on finite simple groups. We prove that these inductive McKay--Navarro (also called the inductive Galois--McKay) conditions hold for the prime $\ell = 2$ for several groups of Lie type, including the untwisted groups without nontrivial graph automorphisms.

We prove that the number of irreducible ordinary characters in the principal $p$-block of a finite group $G$ of order divisible by $p$ is always at least $2\sqrt{p-1}$. This confirms a conjecture of H\'{e}thelyi and K\"{u}lshammer for principal blocks and provides an affirmative answer to Brauer's Problem 21 for principal blocks of bounded defect. Our proof relies on recent works of Mar\'{o}ti and Malle-Mar\'{o}ti on bounding the conjugacy class number and the number of $p'$-degree irreducible characters of finite groups, earlier works of Brou\'{e}-Malle-Michel and Cabanes-Enguehard on the distribution of characters into unipotent blocks and $e$-Harish-Chandra series of finite reductive groups, and known cases of the Alperin-McKay conjecture., Comment: 27 pages

The Alperin-McKay conjecture relates height zero characters of an $\ell$-block with the ones of its Brauer correspondent. This conjecture has been reduced to the so-called inductive Alperin-McKay conditions about quasi-simple groups by the third author. Those conditions are still open for groups of Lie type. The present paper describes characters of height zero in $\ell$-blocks of groups of Lie type over a field with $q$ elements when $\ell$ divides $q-1$. We also give information about $\ell$-blocks and Brauer correspondents. As an application we show that quasi-simple groups of type $C$ over $\mathbb{F}_q$ satisfy the inductive Alperin-McKay conditions for primes $\ell\geq 5$ and dividing $q-1$. Some methods to that end are adapted from the work of Malle--Sp\"ath.

We prove that for most groups of Lie type, the bijections used by Malle and Spaeth in the proof of Isaacs-Malle-Navarro's inductive McKay conditions for the prime 2 and odd primes dividing q - 1 are also equivariant with respect to certain Galois automorphisms. In particular, this shows that these bijections are candidates for proving Navarro-Spaeth-Vallejo's recently-posited inductive Galois-McKay conditions. On the way, we show that several simple groups of Lie type satisfy the McKay--Navarro conjecture for the prime 2.

In a previous work, the second-named author gave a complete description of the action of automorphisms on the ordinary irreducible characters of the finite symplectic groups. We generalise this in two directions. Firstly, using work of the first-named author, we give a complete description of the action of Galois automorphisms on irreducible characters. Secondly, we extend both descriptions to cover the case of special orthogonal groups. As a consequence, we obtain explicit descriptions for the character fields of symplectic and special orthogonal groups., Comment: v1. 40 pages; v2. 42 pages. Corrected the statement of Thm. C and updated Section 16 to reflect this change. No other changes; v3. Final version

Let p be a prime larger than 3 and let G be a finite group. We prove that G is p-solvable of p-length at most 2 if there are at most two distinct character degrees relatively prime to p in the principal p-block of G. This generalizes a theorem of Isaacs-Smith, as well as a recent result of three of the present authors., Comment: 13 pages; to appear in Proc. AMS

We characterize finite groups having a cyclic Sylow p-subgroup in terms of the action of a specific Galois automorphism on the principal p-block for p=2,3. We show that the analog statement for blocks with arbitrary defect group would follow from the blockwise McKay-Navarro conjecture., Comment: 28 pages; shortened some arguments, especially the reduction to simple groups; made referee-suggested revisions: to appear in Algebra & Number Theory

We prove that there exists an integer-valued function f on positive integers such that if a finite group G has at most k real-valued irreducible characters, then |G/Sol(G)| is at most f(k), where Sol(G) denotes the largest solvable normal subgroup of G. In the case k = 5, we further classify G/Sol(G). This partly answers a question of Iwasaki [15] on the relationship between the structure of a finite group and its number of real-valued irreducible characters., Comment: 13 pages

Turull has described the fields of values for characters of $SL_n(q)$ in terms of the parametrization of the characters of $GL_n(q)$. In this article, we extend these results to the case of $SU_n(q)$.

Let $G$ be a finite group with Sylow $2$-subgroup $P \leqslant G$. Navarro-Tiep-Vallejo have conjectured that the principal $2$-block of $N_G(P)$ contains exactly one irreducible Brauer character if and only if all odd-degree ordinary irreducible characters in the principal $2$-block of $G$ are fixed by a certain Galois automorphism $\sigma \in \mathrm{Gal}(\mathbb{Q}_{|G|}/\mathbb{Q})$. Recent work of Navarro-Vallejo has reduced this conjecture to a problem about finite simple groups. We show that their conjecture holds for all finite simple groups, thus establishing the conjecture for all finite groups., Comment: 12 pages

G. Navarro has conjectured a necessary and sufficient condition for a finite group $G$ to have a self-normalizing Sylow 2-subgroup, which is given in terms of the ordinary irreducible characters of $G$. In a previous article, the author has reduced the proof of this conjecture to showing that certain related statements hold for simple groups. In this article, we describe the action of Galois automorphisms on the Howlett-Lehrer parametrization of Harish-Chandra induced characters. We use this to complete the proof of the conjecture by showing that the remaining simple groups satisfy the required conditions., Comment: Accepted version: to appear in Transactions of the AMS

Let $G$ be a finite group and $d$ the degree of a complex irreducible character of $G$, then write $|G|=d(d+e)$ where $e$ is a nonnegative integer. We prove that $|G|\leq e^4-e^3$ whenever $e>1$. This bound is best possible and improves on several earlier related results.

The so-called "local-global" conjectures in the representation theory of finite groups relate the representation theory of $G$ to that of certain proper subgroups, such as the normalizers of particular $p$-groups. Recent results by several authors reduce some of these conjectures to showing that a certain collection of stronger conditions holds for all finite simple groups. Here, we show that $G=Sp_6(2^a)$ is "good" for these reductions for the McKay conjecture, the Alperin weight conjecture, and their blockwise versions.

We classify all pairs $(V,H)$, where $H$ is a proper subgroup of $G=Sp_6(q)$, $q$ even, and $V$ is an $\ell$-modular representation of $G$ for $\ell\neq 2$ which is absolutely irreducible as a representation of $H$. This problem is motivated by the Aschbacher-Scott program on classifying maximal subgroups of finite classical groups.