Lifting of elements of Weyl groups
arXiv:1608.00510
Abstract
Suppose is a reductive algebraic group, is a Cartan subgroup, , and is the Weyl group. If has order , it is natural to ask about the orders lifts of to . It is straightforward to see that the minimal order of a lift of has order or , but it can be a subtle question which holds. We first consider the question of when itself lifts to a subgroup of (in which case every element of lifts to an element of of the same order). We then consider two natural classes of elements: regular and elliptic. In the latter case all lifts of are conjugate, and therefore have the same order. We also consider the twisted case.