Uniformly semi-rational groups (Q6907726)

A finite group \(G\) is said to be rational or rational-valued if every complex character of \(G\) takes values on the field \(\mathbb{Q}\) of rational numbers and this happens if and only if for every \(g \in G\) each generator of \(\langle g \rangle\) is conjugate to \(g\) in \(G\). A group \(G\) is semi-rational if \( \big | \mathbb{Q}(g) : \mathbb{Q} \big | \leq 2\) for every \(g \in G\), where \(\mathbb{Q}(g) = \mathbb{Q} \big (\chi(g) : \chi \in \mathrm{Irr}(G) \big)\) is the field generated by the character values at \(g\).\N\NIn the paper under review, the authors introduce and study families of groups whose irreducible characters take values on quadratic extensions of \(\mathbb{Q}\). They focus on uniformly semi-rational groups, a generalization of inverse semi-rational groups. Two invariants are associated to every finite group, namely, the rationality \(\mathcal{R}_G\) and the semi-rationality \(\mathcal{S}_G\), measuring respectively how far a group is from being rational and how uniformly semi-rational it is. The authors determine the possible values of these invariants for finite nilpotent groups and classify the fields that can occur as \(\mathbb{Q}(G)\) for a finite nilpotent group \(G\).