On groups with at most five irrational conjugacy classes

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This article investigates the relationship between the number of irrational conjugacy classes and irrational irreducible characters in finite groups. A conjugacy class \(x^G\) is said to be irrational if there exists some \(\chi \in \mathrm{Irr}(G)\) such that \(\chi(x) \not\in \mathbb{Q}\). Denote by \(\mathrm{Cl}_{\mathbb{Q}}(G)\) and \(\mathrm{Irr}_{\mathbb{Q}}(G)\) the sets of rational conjugacy classes and rational irreducible characters, respectively.\N\NThe main result (Theorem~A) shows that if a finite group \(G\) has at most five irrational conjugacy classes, then \(|\mathrm{Cl}_{\mathbb{Q}}(G)| = |\mathrm{Irr}_{\mathbb{Q}}(G)|\). The proof combines the Galois action on classes and characters with Brauer's lemma and a permutation isomorphism between the two actions, without appealing to the classification of finite simple groups.\N\NTwo further results are obtained: Theorem~B shows that if \(G\) is solvable with exactly two or three irrational conjugacy classes, then \(\pi(G) \subseteq \{2,3,5,7\}\); Theorem~C proves that both the number and the degrees of irrational irreducible characters are bounded in terms of the number of irrational classes.











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