A motivated introduction to character sheaves and the orbit method for unipotent groups in positive characteristic

We give a definition of character sheaves on the group compactification which is equivalent to Lusztig's definition in \cite{L3}. We also prove some properties of the character sheaves on the group compactification.

Let $G$ be a connected reductive algebraic group defined over a finite field with $q$ elements. In the 1980's, Kawanaka introduced generalised Gelfand-Graev representations of the finite group $G(F_q)$, assuming that $q$ is a power of a good prime for $G$. These representations have turned out to be extremely useful in various contexts. Here we investigate to what extent Kawanaka's construction can be carried out when we drop the assumptions on~$q$. As a curious by-product, w...

Let G be a connected reductive group over a finite field F_q. A map from irreducible representations of G(F_q) to semisimple classes in the dual group was defined by a cohomological method by Deligne and the author in 1976. Here we show that when q is large enough this map has an alternative (non-cohomological) definition.

With this work we initiate a study of the representations of a unipotent group over a field of characteristic zero from the modular point of view. Let $G$ be such a group. The stack of all representations of a fixed finite dimension $n$ is badly behaved. We introduce an invariant, $w$, of $G$, its \textit{width}, as well as a certain nondegeneracy condition on representations, and we prove that nondegenrate representations of dimension $n \le w+1$ form a quasi-projective vari...

In this paper, we extend the notion of Shintani descent to general (possibly disconnected) algebraic groups defined over a finite field $\mathbb{F}_q$. For this, it is essential to treat all the pure inner $\mathbb{F}_q$-rational forms of the algebraic group at the same time. We prove that the notion of almost characters (introduced by T. Shoji using Shintani descent) is well defined for any neutrally unipotent algebraic group, i.e. an algebraic group whose neutral connected ...

Inspired by work surrounding Igusa's local zeta function, we introduce topological representation zeta functions of unipotent algebraic groups over number fields. These group-theoretic invariants capture common features of established $p$-adic representation zeta functions associated with pro-$p$ groups derived from unipotent groups. We investigate fundamental properties of the topological zeta functions considered here. We also develop a method for computing them under non-d...

This text is an extended version of the lecture notes for a course on representation theory of finite groups that was given by the authors during several years for graduate and postgraduate students of Novosibirsk State University and Sobolev Institute of Mathematics.

Let $G$ be a finite group of Lie type. In order to determine the character table of $G$, Lusztig developed the theory of character sheaves. In this framework, one has to find the transformation between two bases for the space of class functions on $G$, one of them being the irreducible characters of $G$, the other one consisting of characteristic functions associated to character sheaves. In principle, this has been achieved by Lusztig and Shoji, but the underlying process in...

Let $G$ be a real simple Lie group, $\got g$ its Lie algebra. Given a nilpotent adjoint $G$-orbit $O$, the question is to determine the irreducible unitary representations of $G$ that we can associate to $O$, according to the orbit method. P.Torasso, in [22], gave a method to solve this problem if $O$ is minimal. In this paper, we study the case where $O$ is any spherical nilpotent orbit of $sl_n({\mathbb R})$, we construct, from $O$, a family of representations of the two-sh...

Let $\mathtt{k}$ be an algebraic closure of a finite field $\mathbb{F}_{q}$ of characteristic $p$. Let $G$ be a connected unipotent group over $\mathtt{k}$ equipped with an $\mathbb{F}_q$-structure given by a Frobenius map $F:G\to G$. We will denote the corresponding algebraic group defined over $\mathbb{F}_q$ by $G_0$. Character sheaves on $G$ are certain objects in the triangulated braided monoidal category $\mathscr{D}_G(G)$ of bounded conjugation equivariant $\bar{\mathbb...