The Isaacs-Navarro conjecture for covering groups of the symmetric and alternating groups in odd characteristic. (Q644686)

The Isaacs-Navarro conjecture is a refinement of the Alperin-McKay conjecture concerning the characters of a finite group \(G\) lying in a \(p\)-block of \(G\). The conjecture is known to hold for symmetric groups (Fong) and alternating groups (Nath) and in this paper the author shows that it also holds in all the covering groups of the symmetric and alternating groups in odd characteristic. The methods used are combinatorial, and the author reduces the problem to showing that the conjecture holds for a certain principal spin block.