On the calculation of local invariants of irreducible characters (Q2178557)

Let \(G\) be a finite group, \(K\) be a field of characteristic \(0\) and \(\mathrm{Irr}_{K}(G)\) be the set of absolutely irreducible characters of \(G\) with values in \(K\). If \(\chi\in\mathrm{Irr}_{K}(G)\) and \(e\in Z(KG)\) is the central idempotent associated with \(\chi\), then \([\chi]_{K}\) denotes the inverse of the class of \([eKG]\) in the Brauer group \(\text{Br}(K)\). If \(K\) is a finite extension of either \(\mathbb{R}\) or a \(p\)-adic field \(\mathbb{Q}_{p}\) then there is a standard, uniquely defined, injective group homomorphism \(\mathrm{inv:Br}(K)\rightarrow \mathbb{Q}/\mathbb{Z}\) (see, for example, [\textit{J.-P. Serre}, Local fields. Translated from the French by Marvin Jay Greenberg. New York, Heidelberg, Berlin: Springer-Verlag (1979; Zbl 0423.12016)]). The object of the present paper is to describe an algorithm for computing \(\mathrm{inv}([\chi]_{K})\) for these classes of fields. The crux of the method deals with the case where \(K\) is a finite extension of \(\mathbb{Q}_{p}\) with \(p\) odd. It is known that in this case the order of \(\mathrm{inv}([\chi]_{K})\) divides \(p-1\) and so it is enough to compute the \(q\)-part \(\mathrm{inv}([\chi]_{K})_{q}\) for each prime \(q\mid p-1\). This leads to a recursive process on the size of \(G\) which reduces to a small family of groups (\(p\)-basic groups) which can be handled individually. The author writes: ``While our method calculates the invariant in every case, its practical implementation requires control over certain subgroups of the group in question, and, in particular, the use of the Brauer-Witt reduction. Hence, the practical implementation of this method is mostly suitable for groups that are not too large. We believe that it has theoretical interest for all finite groups.''