Induction and Restriction of π-Special Characters

Abstract

1. Introduction. The character theory of solvable groups has undergone significant development during the last decade or so and it can now be seen to have quite a rich structure. In particular, there is an interesting interaction between characters and sets of prime numbers.Let G be solvable and let π be a set of primes. The “π-special” characters of G are certain irreducible complex characters (defined by D. Gajendragadkar [1]) which enjoy some remarkable properties, many of which were proved in [1]. (We shall review the definition and relevant facts in Section 3 of this paper.) Actually, we need not assume solvability: that G is π-separable is sufficient, if we are willing to use the Feit-Thompson “odd order” theorem occasionally. We shall state and prove our results under this weaker hypothesis, but we stress that anything of interest in them is already interesting in the solvable case where, of course, the “odd order” theorem is irrelevant.