Galois automorphisms and blocks covering unipotent blocks

Abstract

In this paper we prove that a recent condition of Lyons--Mart\'inez--Navarro--Tiep, regarding the field of values of extensions of characters in principal blocks, is satisfied for all finite simple groups, which when combined with their results gives a new characterization of finite groups with a normal $\ell$-complement for a prime $\ell$. This leads us to study the distribution of characters in unipotent blocks of disconnected reductive groups and show that this is well-behaved under a generalization of $d$-Harish-Chandra theory. We go on to study the blockwise Galois--McKay (also known as the Alperin--McKay--Navarro) conjecture for the blocks of almost (quasi-)simple groups above unipotent blocks.