Locally Determined Functions and Alperin's Conjecture (Q4024905)

Let \(p\) be a prime number and \(G\) be a finite group. Let \(S(G)\) be the poset of all subgroups of \(G\) and let \(A\) be an abelian group. Denote by \({\mathcal F}(G,A)\) the set of all functions \(f:S(G)\to A\) which are constant on conjugacy classes of subgroups. Given a function \(f\in{\mathcal F}(G,A)\), there is a unique function \(\widehat{f}\in{\mathcal F}(G,A)\) such that \(|H|f(H)=\sum_{S \leq H} \widehat{f}(S)\) for all \(H\in S(G)\). A group \(H\) is called \(p\)-local if \(O_p(H)\neq 1\). A function \(f\in{\mathcal F}(G,A)\) is called \(p\)-locally determined if \(\widehat{f}(H)=0\) for all non-\(p\)-local subgroups \(H\). The main result of the article is the following. Theorem (3.1). The set \({\mathcal F}(G,A)\) is the direct sum of the set of all \(p\)-locally determined functions and the set of all functions which vanish on \(p\)- local subgroups. As consequence of the theorem the author states several equivalent versions of Alperin's conjecture on the difference between the number of absolutely irreducible representations of \(G\) in characteristic zero and the number of those representations whose dimension is a multiple of the \(p\)-part of the order of \(G\) (Theorem (6.3)).