Derived categories and Deligne-Lusztig varieties. (Q1424079)

Let \(G\) be a reductive connected algebraic group over a finite field. Then, each conjugacy class can be described via a class of semisimple elements and a class of unipotent elements of a centralizer of a semisimple element. Deligne-Lusztig showed an analogous statement for ordinary characters of this group and the paper under review gives some analogue to that for \(\ell\)-modular characters, \(\ell\) being a prime different from the characteristic of the base field. The authors define a functor from the derived category of modules over a certain appropriately defined block over a Levi subgroup to the derived category of a certain appropriately defined block over the reductive group. This functor is given by left derived tensor product with the complex giving compact support cohomology of a certain combinatorially defined variety \(Y_{I,v}\), which depends on some subset \(I\) of a root basis \(\Delta\) corresponding to the reductive group \(G\) and an element \(v\) of the Weyl group. The authors show that the complex the tensor product is defined for has cohomology in only one degree, and this cohomology is a Morita bi-module. The precise statement is too technical to be recorded here, also the method of proof is highly sophisticated. Many of the intermediate steps are important in their own right and are likely to be useful elsewhere.