Seminars & Colloquia Calendar

Download as iCal file

Number Theory Seminar

`Small' Representations of Finite Groups

Shamgar Gurevitch: University of Wisconsin

Location:  Hill 525
Date & time: Tuesday, 21 February 2017 at 2:00PM - 2:11PM

Suppose you have a finite group G and you want to study certain related structures (e.g., random walks, Cayley graphs, word maps, etc.). In some cases, this might be done using sums over the characters of G. It seems that, in some cases, an obstacle in applying these formulas is lack of control over the low-dimensional representations of G. In fact, numerics shows that the “small representations tend to contribute the largest terms to these sums, so a systematic knowledge of them might assists in the solution of some interesting problems.

This talk discusses a joint project with Roger Howe (Yale). We introduce a language to speak about “sizeâ€ù of a representation, and we develop a method for systematically construct (conjecturally all the) ''small'' representations of finite classical groups.

We will illustrate our theory with concrete motivations and numerical data obtained with John Cannon (MAGMA, Sydney) and Steve Goldstein (Scientific computing, Madison).

Special Note to All Travelers

Directions: map and driving directions. If you need information on public transportation, you may want to check the New Jersey Transit page.

Unfortunately, cancellations do occur from time to time. Feel free to call our department: 848-445-6969 before embarking on your journey. Thank you.