Blocks of certain classes of finite groups (Q1103715)

Let p be a prime. The author considers triples (G,z,s) where G is a finite group, z is an element of order p in the center of G and \(s: G\to {\mathbb{Z}}/p{\mathbb{Z}}\) is a homomorphism such that \(s(z)=0\). Given two such triples \((G_ 1,z_ 1,s_ 1)\) and \((G_ 2,z_ 2,s_ 2)\), a triple \((G_ 3,z_ 3,s_ 3)\) is constructed in such a way that \(G_ 3/<z_ 3>\) is isomorphic to \(G_ 1/<z_ 1>\times G_ 2/<z_ 2>\). Then the irreducible modules and blocks of \(G_ 3\) are determined in terms of the irreducible modules and blocks of \(G_ 1\) and \(G_ 2\). The results in this paper are motivated by the author's investigation of the blocks of the covering groups of the symmetric groups.