A note on Samelson products and mod \(p\) cohomology of classifying spaces of the exceptional Lie groups (Q1044872)

This paper determines a number of non-zero Samelson products in the homotopy of the exceptional Lie groups. To each of the exceptional groups \(G(l) = G_{2}, F_{4}, E_{6}, E_{7}, E_{8}\) of rank \(l\) the authors associate a prime \(r(l) = 7,13,13,19,31\) respectively. In addition they associate sets \(N(l)\) of integers to each group, for example for \(E_{8}\) the set is \(\{2,8,12,14,18,20,24,30\}\); the two main results are: If \(k_{1} , k_{2} \in N(l)\) satisfy \(k_{1} + k_{2} = r(l) + 1\), then the Samelson product \(\langle \varepsilon_{2k_{1} -1}, \varepsilon_{2k_{2} -1} \rangle \neq 0\) in \(\pi_{2(r(l)}(G(l)_{r(l)})\) and the product \(\langle \langle \varepsilon_{2k_{1} -1}, \varepsilon_{2k_{2} -1} \rangle, \varepsilon_{2r(l) - 3}\rangle \neq 0\) in \(\pi_{4r(l) - 3}(G(l)_{r(l)})\). Here the subscripts on the \(G(l)\) denote localization. The proofs depend on computation with the cohomology operator \({\mathcal P}^{1}\) in the cohomology of the classifying spaces \(BG(l)\).