Shintani lifting and real-valued characters. (Q967644)

Let \(\mathbf F_q\) be a finite field with \(q\) elements, let \(\overline{\mathbf F}_q\) denote an algebraic closure of \(\mathbf F_q\), and let \(\mathbf G\) be a connected reductive linear algebraic group over \(\overline{\mathbf F}_q\), defined over \(\mathbf F_q\). Let \(\sigma\) denote the corresponding Frobenius endomorphism. Let \(m\geq 2\) be an integer and let \(\chi\) be a \(\sigma\)-invariant irreducible character of the group \(\mathbf G(\mathbf F_{q^m})\) such that \(\chi\) is a `Shintani lift' of an irreducible character \(\psi\) of the group \(\mathbf G(\mathbf F_q)\). It is proved in the article that \(\psi\) is real-valued if and only if \(\chi\) is real-valued. As a consequence of this result, the author shows that if \(m\) is even and \(q\equiv 3\pmod 4\) then an irreducible character of \(\text{Sp}(2n,\mathbf F_q)\) which is not real-valued (it is known that there exist such characters) does not have a Shintani lift to \(\text{Sp}(2n,\mathbf F_{q^m})\). When \(q\) is odd, he defines in terms of Shintani liftings a bijection from the set of irreducible real-valued characters of \(\text{GL}(n,\mathbf F_q)\) to the set of irreducible real-valued characters of the unitary group \(\text{U}(n,\mathbf F_q)\). Another result which is proved in the article is the fact that if \(\chi\) is an irreducible character of \(\mathbf G(\mathbf F_{q^2})\), which is invariant under the twisting operator and is the Shintani lift of an irreducible real-valued character of \(\mathbf G(\mathbf F_q)\), then we have \(\varepsilon(\chi)=1\), where \(\varepsilon\) denotes the Frobenius-Schur indicator. Let us assume from now on that the center of \(\mathbf G\) is connected. Then the author demonstrates that, if \(\chi\) is an irreducible character of \(\mathbf G(\mathbf F_{q^m})\) which is a Shintani lift of a regular or a semisimple real-valued character \(\psi\) of \(\mathbf G(\mathbf F_q)\), then we have \[ \varepsilon(\chi)=\begin{cases}\varepsilon(\psi)&\text{if \(m\) is odd}\\ 1&\text{otherwise.}\end{cases} \] In the last section of the article, the author describes a bijection from the set of irreducible Deligne-Lusztig characters of \(\mathbf G(\mathbf F_q)\) and the set of irreducible \(\sigma\)-invariant Deligne-Lusztig characters of \(\mathbf G(\mathbf F_{q^m})\), which is known in many cases to coincide with Shintani lifting, by results of Gyoja and Digne. Next he proves that this map restricts to give a bijection between the subsets of real-valued irreducible Deligne-Lusztig characters of \(\mathbf G(\mathbf F_q)\) and \(\mathbf G(\mathbf F_{q^m})\), and that this map has the same effect as described above on the Frobenius-Schur indicator.