The Steinberg representation is irreducible (Q6046452)

The article under review deals with the well-known representation theory of the \textit{Steinberg representation} of discrete groups. The authors prove the remarkable fact that the Steinberg representation of a connected reductive group over an infinite field is always irreducible (see Theorems A and B, respectively). This somewhat extends the classical prominent theorem of Steinberg and Curtis established for finite fields, which plays a key role in the theory of representations of classical algebraic groups. Previously, this was unknown in the complete generality, even in the concrete case for \(\mathbf{G}=\mathrm{GL}_2\). Letting \(\mathbf{G}\) be a connected reductive group over a field \(k\), it is worthwhile noticing that the Steinberg representation is not an algebraic representation of \(\mathbf{G}\) but just is a representation of the abstract group \(\mathbf{G}(k)\). Also, when \(k\) is finite, the Steinberg representation is ever finite-dimensional, and thus Steinberg and Curtis showed that it is usually irreducible, while if \(k\) is infinite, then it is typically infinite-dimensional and so the situation is rather more complicated than usual. This makes the aforementioned result by the present authors very important for the subject and, therefore, the paper will definitely be of a great interest for the mathematical community.