On the restriction of cuspidal representations to unipotent elements (Q2777973)

The paper examines characters of representations of a connected split classical reductive group \(G\) over a finite field \(\mathbb{F}_q\). The main result is a character formula for classical groups on nilpotent elements. If \(T\) is a maximal split torus and \(B\) a Borel subgroup containing \(T\), then by \textit{R. B. Howlett} and \textit{G. I. Lehrer} [Invent. Math. 58, 37-64 (1980; Zbl 0435.20023)] the algebra \(\text{End}_{G(\mathbb{F}_q)}(\text{Ind}^{G(\mathbb{F}_q)}_{B(\mathbb{F}_q)}(1))\) can be identified with the group algebra \(\mathbb{C}[W]\), where \(W\) is the Weil group of \(G\). The authors use a correspondence of the irreducible components of \(\text{Ind}_{B(\mathbb{F}_q)}^{G(\mathbb{F}_q)}(1)\), and the irreducible representations of \(W\) to express the values of cuspidal characters of split classical groups at unipotent elements as alternating sums of character values of some components corresponding to exterior power representations of the reflection representation of \(W\). Moreover, in the sum contribute certain characters coming from a correspondence of similar type, but depending on the choice of \(G\) in a more sophisticated way.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEFor the proof of the main theorem the authors determine the characters of \(W\) on the Coxeter conjugacy class, i.e. on an element of maximal length with respect to a Coxeter system, to be \(1\), \(-1\) or \(0\) and parametrize the unipotent representations of \(G\), where the notion of unipotent representation is due to \textit{P. Deligne} and \textit{G. Lusztig} [J. Algebra 81, 540-545 (1983; Zbl 0535.20020)].