Alperin's weight conjecture, Galois automorphisms, alternating sums, and functorial equivalences

Abstract

We show that functorial equivalences can offer new insight into the blockwise Galois Alperin weight conjecture (BGAWC). Inspired by Kn\"orr and Robinson's work, we first formulate the BGAWC in terms of alternating sums indexed by chains of $p$-subgroups, and we also give a functorial reformulation in the Grothendieck group of diagonal $p$-permutation functors. We prove that these formulations are equivalent. We further show that if a functorial equivalence between a block with abelian defect group and its Brauer correspondent descends to the minimal field of the block, then the BGAWC holds for that block. Finally, we prove that Galois conjugate blocks are functorially equivalent over an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero.