Degrees and fields of values of irreducible characters (Q6040522)

This paper is concerned with the following question: What abelian extension of \(\mathbf{Q}\) could be the field of values of an irreducible character of a finite group? The main result answers this question completely in case that the degree of the character is 2 or 3, as follows: Let \(F\) be an abelian extension of the rational numbers. Write \(c(F)\) for the conductor of this extension, i.e., the smalles postive integer \(n\) such that \(F\) is contained in the cyclotomic field \(\mathbf{Q}_n\). Then the following hold: \begin{itemize} \item[(i)] \(F\) is the field of values of an irreducible character of degree 2 of some finite group if and only if \([\mathbf{Q}_{c(F)} : F]\leq 2\). \item[(ii)] \(F\) is the field of values of an irreducible character of degree 3 of some finite group if and only if \([\mathbf{Q}_{c(F)} : F] \in \{1, 3\}\) or \(F = \mathbf{Q}_k (\sqrt{5})\) for some positive integer \(k\) not divisible by 5. \end{itemize} This result leads the authors to conjecture that \([\mathbf{Q}_{c(\mathbf{Q}(\chi))} : \mathbf{Q}(\chi)]\leq \chi(1)\) for any finite group \(G\) and irreducible character \(\chi\) of \(G\) and they prove the conjecture for the alternating groups as well as the general linear and unitary groups.