Weakly closed unipotent subgroups in Chevalley groups. (Q2498866)

It is a classical result, that unipotent radicals of parabolics in finite Chevalley groups are weakly closed in the Sylow \(p\)-subgroup. In this paper the authors ask if these are the only weakly closed subgroups in the unipotent radical \(U\) of a Borel group \(B\) of a split Chevalley group over a field \(k\). If \(G=G(k)\) is an untwisted Chevalley group where \(|k|>2\), in some cases even \(|k|>3\) and in case of \(C_n\) and \(\text{char\,}k=2\), \(k\) has to be perfect, then the authors show that for a weakly closed subgroup \(X\) of \(U\) it follows that \(X\) is the unipotent radical of the parabolic \(P=N_G(X)\). The same holds for the twisted groups not of type \(^2B_2\), \(^2G_2\) or \(^2F_4\) provided \(|k|>5\). As an application they show that the Lie algebra of a connected simple algebraic group is not a \(2F\)-module. Moreover they give upper bounds for the dimensions of \(2F\)-modules. These modules play an important role in the classification of the finite simple groups and for the finite simple groups they have been classified by \textit{R. M. Guralnick} and \textit{G. Malle} [J. Algebra 257, No. 2, 348-372 (2002; Zbl 1017.20005) and Finite Groups 2003, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. 117-183 (2004; Zbl 1085.20004)].