We develop the concept of character level for the complex irreducible characters of finite, general or special, linear and unitary groups. We give characterizations of the level of a character in terms of its Lusztig label and in terms of its degree. Then we prove explicit upper bounds for character values at elements with not-too-large centralizers and derive upper bounds on the covering number and mixing time of random walks corresponding to these conjugacy classes. We also characterize the level of the character in terms of certain dual pairs and prove explicit exponential character bounds for the character values, provided that the level is not too large. Several further applications are also provided. Related results for other finite classical groups are obtained in the sequel [Guralnick et al. ‘Character levels and character bounds for finite classical groups’, Preprint, 2019, arXiv:1904.08070] by different methods.

We prove that spin groups act generically freely on various spinor modules, in the sense of group schemes and in a way that does not depend on the characteristic of the base field. As a consequence, we extend the surprising calculation of the essential dimension of spin groups and half-spin groups in characteristic zero by Brosnan et al. [Essential dimension, spinor groups, and quadratic forms, Ann. of Math. (2) 171 (2010), 533–544], and Chernousov and Merkurjev [Essential dimension of spinor and Clifford groups, Algebra Number Theory 8 (2014), 457–472] to fields of characteristic different from two. We also complete the determination of generic stabilizers in spin and half-spin groups of low rank.

We study the problem of determining, for a polynomial function $f$ on a vector space $V$, the linear transformations $g$ of $V$ such that $f\circ g=f$. When $f$ is invariant under a simple algebraic group $G$ acting irreducibly on $V$, we note that the subgroup of $\text{GL}(V)$ stabilizing $f$ often has identity component $G$, and we give applications realizing various groups, including the largest exceptional group $E_{8}$, as automorphism groups of polynomials and algebras. We show that, starting with a simple group $G$ and an irreducible representation $V$, one can almost always find an $f$ whose stabilizer has identity component $G$, and that no such $f$ exists in the short list of excluded cases. This relies on our core technical result, the enumeration of inclusions $G<H\leqslant \text{SL}(V)$ such that $V/H$ has the same dimension as $V/G$. The main results of this paper are new even in the special case where $k$ is the complex numbers.

Perhaps unexpectedly, there is a rich and deep connection between field of values of characters, their degrees and the structure of a finite group. Some of the fundamental results on the degrees of characters of finite groups, as the Ito–Michler and Thompson's theorems, admit a version involving only characters with certain fixed field of values ([DNT, NS, NST2, NT1, NT3]).

We study Frobenius groups acting on curves.

The low-dimensional projective irreducible representations in cross characteristics of the projective special linear group $\mbox{PSL}_{n}(q)$ are investigated.

If $n \geq 3$ and $(n,q) \neq (3,2)$, $(3,4)$, $(4,2)$, $(4,3)$, all such representations of the first degree (which is $(q^{n}-q)/(q-1) - \kappa$ with $\kappa = 0$ or $1$) and the second degree (which is $(q^{n}-1)/(q-1)$) come from Weil representations. We show that the gap between the second and the third degree is roughly $q^{2n-4}$.

In this article, we obtain results on commutators in Sylow subgroups of the lower central series, extending the work of Dark and Newell [2], Rodney [12, 13] and Aschbacher and the author [1, 6, 7].

Some notation is required for the statement of the main results. Let r be a positive integer and define

and

where x1, …, xr, are elements in a group G. Let ΓrG = {[x1, …, xr]∣ x1 ∈ G} be the set of r-fold commutators in G. Then Lr,G = 〈ΓrG〉 is the rth term in the lower central series of G. Set L∞G = ∩ Lr,G.

Let G be a group. The rth term LrG of the lower central series of G is the subgroup generated by the r-fold commutators

where , and for r > 1,

Let K be an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero, and S a nonempty subset of K such that S Q = Ø and card S < card K, where Q is the field of rational numbers. By Zorn's Lemma, there exist subfields F of K which are maximal with respect to the property of being disjoint from S. This paper examines such subfields and investigates the Galois group Gal K/F along with the lattice of intermediate subfields.

Let G be a group. We define λ(G) to be the smallest integer n such that every element of the commutator subgroup G′ is a product of n commutators. Ito [4] has shown that λ (An)= 1 for all n. Thompson [7] has shown that λ (SLn(q))= 1 for all n and q. In fact, there is no known simple group G such that λ(G)>1. However, there do exist such perfect groups (cf. [7]).