On the unipotent support of character sheaves. (Q953944)

Let \(G\) be a connected reductive group over \(\mathbb{F}_q\), where the center of \(G\) is connected and both \(q\) and the characteristic \(p\) are large enough. The authors show that under a certain technical condition, treated in the thesis of the second author, the restriction of a character sheaf to its unipotent support (as defined by Lusztig) is either zero or an irreducible local system. As an application the generalized Gelfand-Graev characters are shown to form a \(\mathbb{Z}\)-basis of the \(\mathbb{Z}\)-module of unipotently supported virtual characters of \(G(\mathbb{F}_q)\) (Kawanaka's conjecture).