Homogeneous products of characters. (Q1883006)

The authors prove that the following conjecture holds for nilpotent groups: Suppose that \(G\) is solvable and that \(\psi,\varphi\in\text{Irr}(G)\) are faithful. If \(\psi\varphi=m\chi\) where \(m\) is a positive integer and \(\chi\in\text{Irr}(G)\), then \(\psi\), \(\varphi\) and \(\chi\) vanish on \(G-Z(G)\). Moreover, they point out that the preceding conjecture holds for \(p\)-special characters in the sense of \textit{D. Gajendragadkar} [J. Algebra 59, 237-259 (1979; Zbl 0426.20007)]. As a consequence it is shown for a \(p\)-solvable group: If the product of two faithful \(p\)-special characters is a multiple of a \(p\)-special character, then \(G\) is a \(p\)-group.