Twisted conjugacy classes in Chevalley groups. (Q2356085)

The property that for every automorphism \(\varphi\) of a group \(G\) the Reidemeister number \(R(\varphi)\) (or the number of twisted conjugacy classes) is infinite, also called the \(R_\infty\)-property, has been established for many groups. Notoriously for symplectic groups and certain linear groups. So it is quite natural to study Chevalley groups. This is the goal of the work under review. The author develops several properties of Chevalley groups in terms of the root system and automorphisms, which are used for the main purpose, which is to detect infinitely many Reidemeister classes for automorphisms. Then in section 2 he proves the main results which are: Theorem 1. Let \(G\) be a Chevalley group of type \(\Phi\neq A_1\) over a field \(F\) of characteristic zero, and let the transcendence degree of \(F\) over \(\mathbb Q\) be finite. Then: (1) If \(\Phi\) has one of the types \(A_\ell\), \(\ell\geq 7\), \(B_\ell\), \(l\geq 4\), \(E_8\), \(F_4\), or \(G_2\), then \(G\) possesses the \(R_\infty\)-property. (2) If the equation \(f(T)=a\) is solvable in \(F\) for any \(a\), where \(f\) is a polynomial as defined in Lemma 4, then \(G\) possesses the \(R_\infty\)-property also for root systems of types \(A_\ell\), \(\ell=2,3,4,5,6\), \(B_\ell\), \(\ell=2,3\), \(C_\ell\), \(l\geq 3\), \(D_\ell\), \(\ell\geq 4\), \(E_6\), and \(E_7\). and Theorem 2. Let \(G\) be a Chevally group of type \(\Phi\neq A_1\) over a field \(F\) of characteristic zero. If the automorphism group of \(F\) is periodic, then \(G\) has the \(R_\infty\)-property. He points out that the hypothesis that \(F\) has characteristic zero can not be discarded, once examples are known where the Reidemeister number is finite if the field \(F\) has non-zero characteristic. At the end he proves some result about the conjugacy class of the identity element. This question has been studied recently.