Big elements in irreducible linear groups. (Q465484)

One of the main results of this paper is the following: Let \(G\leq\text{GL}(V)\) be an irreducible linear group, and let \(n=\dim V>1\). Then there is an element \(g\in G\) such that \(\text{rank}(g-\alpha E_n)\geq\frac{n}{2}\) for every \(\alpha\in K\). This implies that for an irreducible linear group \(G\leq\text{GL}(V)\) the conjugacy class \(\mathcal C_G =\{xGx^{-1}\mid x\in\text{GL}(V) \}\) in \(\text{GL}(V)\) intersects the big Bruhat cell \(B\dot w_0B\) where \(B\) is a fixed Borel subgroup of \(\text{GL}(V)\). Let \(G\leq\text{GL}(V)\) be a linear group satisfying the following property: for every pair of linear subspaces \(v,u\leq V\) there is an element \(g\in G\) such that \(g(v),u\) are in general position, that is, \(\dim(g(v)\cap u)=0\) or \(\dim(g(v)\cap u)=\dim v+\dim u-\dim V\). The authors consider the related question: given a flag \(\mathfrak F\), when can one find an element \(g\) in the given linear group \(G\) such that the flags \(g(\mathfrak F),\mathfrak F\) are in general position? Let \(\mathcal F_n\) be the set of all complete flags of \(V\). The authors show: Let \(K\) be an algebraically closed field, and let \(G\leq\text{GL}(V)\) be an irreducible linear group. Then there exists an element \(g\in G\) and a non-empty open subset \(U_g\subset\mathcal F_n\) such that the flags \(g(\mathfrak F),\mathfrak F\) are in general position for every flag \(\mathfrak F\subset U_g\). (Also submitted to MR)