Character Kernels of Discrete Groups
Let \(G\) be an arbitrary discrete group and \(C(G)\) the group algebra of \(G\) over the field of complex numbers \(C\). Let \(R\) be an irreducible representation of \(C(G)\). If \(D\) is the commuting ring of \(R\), \(L\) the centre of \(D\) and \((C(G): L)<\infty\), then \(R\) is said to be finite and \((C(G): L)=m^2\), for some \(m\). Then \(m\) is defined to be the degree of \(R\). Let \(R_{n}(G)\) be the intersection of the kernels of all irreducible representations of degree greater than \(n\) and \(b(G)\) the lower upper bound of the degrees of the irreducible representations of \(G\). If \(b(G) \leq n\), then clearly \(R_{n}(G)=G\). Thus, this paper is mainly concerned with groups for which \(b(G)>n\). First proved is the following theorem. If \(I_{n}\) is the linear subspace of \(C(G)\) spanned by all elements of the form \(\left[n_{1}, \ldots, n_{2n}\right]\), where \(n_{i} \in C(G)\), then \(g \in R_{n}(G)\) if and only if \( (1-g) I_{n}=0\). It follows that \(\left| R_{n}(G)\right| \leq \frac{1}{2}(2n)!\) and if \(H\) is a subgroup of \(G\) with \(b(H)>n\), then \(R_{n}(G) \subseteq R_{n}(H)\). The main theorem proved essentially reduces the study of groups \(G\) with \(b(G)>n\) and \(R_{n}(G)>1\) to the study of finite groups. If \(\beta_{1}, \ldots, \beta_{m}\) are non-zero elements of \(C(G)\), then there exist subgroups \(H\) and \(N\) of \(G\) such that (i) \(\beta_{1}, \ldots, \beta_{m} \in C(H)\), (ii) \( b(H)>n\), (iii) \(R_{n}(H)=R_{n}(G)\), (iv) \(N\) is a normal subgroup of \(H\) with \(H/N\) finite and \(b(H/N)>n\), (v) under the natural homomorphism \(C(H)\rightarrow C(H/N)\), we have \(\beta_{i} \rightarrow \bar{\beta}_{i} \neq 0\) and \(R_{n}(G)\cong R_{n}(H/N)\). It follows that if \(R_{n}(G)>1\), then \(b(G) \leq n^2\). The paper concludes with a method for constructing a class of groups satisfying the properties of the main theorem.
This page was built for publication: Character Kernels of Discrete Groups
Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q5521545)
