Restricting supercharacters of the finite group of unipotent uppertriangular matrices. (Q1010928)

Summary: It is well-known that understanding the representation theory of the finite group of unipotent upper-triangular matrices \(U_n\) over a finite field is a wild problem. By instead considering approximately irreducible representations (supercharacters), one obtains a rich combinatorial theory analogous to that of the symmetric group, where we replace partition combinatorics with set-partitions. This paper studies the supercharacter theory of a family of subgroups that interpolate between \(U_{n-1}\) and \(U_n\). We supply several combinatorial indexing sets for the supercharacters, supercharacter formulas for these indexing sets, and a combinatorial rule for restricting supercharacters from one group to another. A consequence of this analysis is a Pieri-like restriction rule from \(U_n\) to \(U_{n-1}\) that can be described on set-partitions (analogous to the corresponding symmetric group rule on partitions).