arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to George McNinch.
We discuss local-global principles for the existence of Levi factors (i.e., complements to the unipotent radical) for linear algebraic groups over one-variable function fields. We give examples of disconnected groups that fail the local-global principle, and prove a strong local-global principle in the presence of Levi descent.
Let G be a connected and reductive algebraic group over an algebraically closed field of characteristic p > 0. An interesting class of representations of G consists of those G-modules having a good filtration -- i.e. a filtration whose layers are the standard highest weight modules obtained as the space of global sections of G-linearized line bundles on the flag variety of G. Let H be a connected and reductive subgroup of G. One says that (G,H) is a Donkin pair, or that H is a good filtration subgroup of G, if every G-module with good filtration also has a good filtration as an H-module. In this paper, we show when G is a "classical group" that the optimal SL2-subgroups of G are good filtration subgroups, and we also determine some primes for which distinguished optimal SL2-subgroups of groups of exceptional type are good filtration subgroups. Additionally, we consider the cases of subsystem subgroups in all types and determine some primes for which they are good filtration subgroups.
Let G be a semisimple algebraic group over a field K whose characteristic is very good for G, and let sigma be any G-equivariant isomorphism from the nilpotent variety to the unipotent variety; the map sigma is known as a Springer isomorphism. Let y in G(K), let Y in Lie(G)(K), and write C_y = C_G(y) and C_Y= C_G(Y) for the centralizers. We show that the center of C_y and the center of C_Y are smooth group schemes over K. The existence of a Springer isomorphism is used to treat the crucial cases where y is unipotent and where Y is nilpotent. Now suppose G to be quasisplit, and write C for the centralizer of a rational regular nilpotent element. We obtain a description of the normalizer N_G(C) of C, and we show that the automorphism of Lie(C) determined by the differential of sigma at zero is a scalar multiple of the identity; these results verify observations of J-P. Serre.
Let X and Y be commuting nilpotent K-endomorphisms of a vector space V, where K is a field of characteristic p >= 0. If F=K(t) is the field of rational functions on the projective line, consider the K(t)-endomorphism A=X+tY of V. If p=0, or if the (p-1)-st power of A is 0, we show here that X and Y are tangent to the unipotent radical of the centralizer of A in GL(V). For all geometric points (a:b) of a suitable open subset of the projective line, it follows that X and Y are tangent to the unipotent radical of the centralizer of aX+bY. This answers a question of J. Pevtsova.