A conjecture of Cameron and Kiyota on sharp characters with prescribed values

Abstract

Let $ \chi $ be a virtual (generalized) character of a finite group $ G $ and $ L=L(\chi)$ be the image of $ \chi $ on $ G-\lbrace 1 \rbrace $. The pair $ (G, \chi) $ is said to be sharp of type $ L $ if $|G|=\prod _{ l \in L} (\chi(1) - l) $. If the principal character of $G$ is not an irreducible constituent of $\chi$, the pair $(G,\chi)$ is called normalized. In this paper, we first provide some counterexamples to a conjecture that was proposed by Cameron and Kiyota in $1988$. This conjecture states that if $(G,\chi)$ is sharp and $|L|\geq 2$, then the inner product $(\chi,\chi)_G$ is uniquely determined by $ L $. We then prove that this conjecture is true in the case that $(G,\chi) $ is normalized, $\chi$ is a character of $ G $, and $ L $ contains at least an irrational value.