On Héthelyi-Külshammer's conjecture for principal blocks

Abstract

We prove that the number of irreducible ordinary characters in the principal $p$-block of a finite group $G$ of order divisible by $p$ is always at least $2\sqrt{p-1}$. This confirms a conjecture of Héthelyi and Külshammer for principal blocks and provides an affirmative answer to Brauer's Problem 21 for principal blocks of bounded defect. Our proof relies on recent works of Maróti and Malle-Maróti on bounding the conjugacy class number and the number of $p^{\prime }$-degree irreducible characters of finite groups, earlier works of Broué-Malle-Michel and Cabanes-Enguehard on the distribution of characters into unipotent blocks and $e$-Harish-Chandra series of finite reductive groups, and known cases of the Alperin-McKay conjecture.

27 pages

References in corpus (2)

• Galois Automorphisms and Classical Groups
• The principal $p$-blocks with small numbers of characters

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Prime divisors and the number of conjugacy classes of finite groups