Supercharacters of discrete algebra groups

Abstract

The concept of a supercharacter theory of a finite group was introduced by Diaconis and Isaacs as an alternative to the usual irreducible character theory, and exemplified with a particular construction in the case of finite algebra groups. We extend this construction to arbitrary countable discrete algebra groups, where superclasses and indecomposable supercharacters play the role of conjugacy classes and indecomposable characters, respectively. Our construction can be understood as a cruder version of Kirillov's orbit method and a generalisation of Diaconis and Isaacs construction for finite algebra groups. However, we adopt an ergodic theoretical point of view. The theory is then illustrated with the characterisation of the standard supercharacters of the group of upper unitriangular matrices over an algebraic closed field of prime characteristic.