Supercharacters of the Sylow p-subgroups of the finite symplectic and orthogonal groups

Abstract

We define and study supercharacters of the classical finite unipotent groups of symplectic and orthogonal types (over any finite field of odd characteristic). We show how supercharacters for groups of those types can be obtained by restricting the supercharacter theory of the finite unitriangular group, and prove that supercharacters are orthogonal and provide a partition of the set of all irreducible characters. We also describe all irreducible characters of maximum degree in terms of the root system, and show how they can be obtained as constituents of particular supercharacters.