Counting conjugacy classes in the unipotent radical of parabolic subgroups of $\GL_n(q)$

Abstract

Let $q$ be a power of a prime $p$. Let $P$ be a parabolic subgroup of the general linear group $\GL_n(q)$ that is the stabilizer of a flag in $\FF_q^n$ of length at most 5, and let $U=O_p(P)$. In this note we prove that, as a function of $q$, the number $k(U)$ of conjugacy classes of $U$ is a polynomial in $q$ with integer coefficients.

8 pages; to appear in Pacific Journal of Mathematics