Equivariant Alperin-Robinson's conjecture reduces to almost-simple \(k^*\)-groups. (Q2376694)

The paper under review is concerned with Alperin's Weight Conjecture (AWC), one of the central open problems in representation theory of finite groups. It states an equivariant version of this conjecture which essentially goes back to a paper by \textit{G. R. Robinson} and \textit{R. Staszewski} [Astérisque 181-182, 237-255 (1990; Zbl 0703.20008)]. The statement of the conjecture involves the local Grothendieck group of a block introduced by the author in previous papers on the subject. The main result here is a reduction theorem: The author's version of AWC holds for all finite groups if and only if it holds for all almost simple groups. Here a group is called almost simple if it contains a simple normal subgroup with trivial centralizer. The proof of the reduction theorem makes use of the Schreier conjecture, a consequence of the classification of finite simple groups. In a second main result of the paper, the author gives sufficient (``almost necessary'' in the author's words) conditions on finite simple groups which imply that the author's version of AWC holds for all finite groups.