The so-called Burnside–Dixon–Schneider (BDS) method, currently used as the default method of computing character tables in GAP for groups which are not solvable, is often inefficient in dealing with groups with large centres. If $G$ is a finite group with centre $Z$ and $\lambda $ a linear character of $Z$, then we describe a method of computing the set $\mathrm{Irr} (G, \lambda )$ of irreducible characters $\chi $ of $G$ whose restriction ${\chi }_{Z} $ is a multiple of $\lambda $. This modification of the BDS method involves only $\vert \mathrm{Irr} (G, \lambda )\vert $ conjugacy classes of $G$ and so is relatively fast. A generalization of the method can be applied to computation of small sets of characters of groups with a solvable normal subgroup.

Supplementary materials are available with this article.

We determine the conditions under which singular values of multiple $\eta $-quotients of square-free level, not necessarily prime to six, yield class invariants; that is, algebraic numbers in ring class fields of imaginary-quadratic number fields. We show that the singular values lie in subfields of the ring class fields of index ${2}^{{k}^{\prime } - 1} $ when ${k}^{\prime } \geq 2$ primes dividing the level are ramified in the imaginary-quadratic field, which leads to faster computations of elliptic curves with prescribed complex multiplication. The result is generalised to singular values of modular functions on ${ X}_{0}^{+ } (p)$ for $p$ prime and ramified.

We show that there are only finitely many primes $p$ such that $\mathrm{PSL} (2, p)$ has a minimal generating set of size four.

Supplementary materials are available with this article.