Title: Invariable generation and totally deranged elements of almost simple groups

Abstract: By a classical theorem of Jordan, every faithful transitive action of a nontrivial finite group admits a derangement (an element with no fixed points). More recently, the existence of derangements with additional properties has attracted much attention, especially for primitive actions of almost simple groups. Surprisingly, there exist almost simple groups with elements that are derangements in every faithful primitive action; we say that these elements are totally deranged. I’ll talk about recent work to classify the totally deranged elements of almost simple groups, and I’ll mention how this solves a question of Garzoni about invariable generating sets for simple groups.

Title: Simple Modules for Algebraic Groups

I will report on current work with David Stewart. In this work we have: a) given a classification of simple modules for algebraic groups over arbitrary fields, which extends well-known high weight classifications when the field is algebraically closed and/or the group is reductive; b) begun to explore the structure of these simple modules, in particular how they look after extensions of the ground field. The key to progress is to understand so-called "pseudo-reductive groups". I will spend most of the talk on an extended example of such a group and its representations, which can be constructed pretty concretely from the simple algebraic group SL₂.

Title: Primitive amalgams and the Goldschmidt-Sims conjecture

Abstract: The Classification of Finite Simple Groups has led to substantial progress on deriving sharp order bounds in various natural families of finite groups. One of the most well-known instances of this is Sims' conjecture, which states that a point stabiliser in a primitive permutation group has order bounded in terms of its smallest non-trivial orbit length (this was proved by Cameron, Praeger, Saxl and Seitz using the CFSG in 1983). In the meantime, Goldschmidt observed that a generalised version of Sims' conjecture, which we now call the Goldschmidt--Sims conjecture, would lead to important applications in graph theory. In this talk, we will describe the conjecture, and discuss some recent progress. Joint work with L. Pyber.

Title: The Orbital Diameter of Primitive Permutation Groups

Abstract: Let G be a group acting transitively on a finite set Ω. Then G acts on ΩxΩ component wise. Define the orbitals to be the orbits of G on ΩxΩ. The diagonal orbital is the orbital of the form ∆ = {(α, α)|α ∈ Ω}. The others are called non-diagonal orbitals. Let Γ be a non-diagonal orbital. Define an orbital graph to be the non-directed graph with vertex set Ω and edge set (α,β)∈ Γ with α,β∈ Ω. If the action of G on Ω is primitive, then all non-diagonal orbital graphs are connected. The orbital diameter of a primitive permutation group is the supremum of the diameters of its non-diagonal orbital graphs.

There has been a lot of interest in finding bounds on the orbital diameter of primitive permutation groups. In my talk I will outline some important background information and the progress made towards finding explicit bounds on the orbital diameter. In particular, I will discuss some results on the orbital diameter of the groups of simple diagonal type and their connection to the covering number of finite simple groups. I will also discuss some results for affine groups, which provides a nice connection to the representation theory of quasisimple groups.

Title: Some problems on representations of simple algebraic groups

Abstract: Some open questions on the weight structure of tensor-decomposable representations of simple algebraic groups will be discussed.

Title: The Boston--Shalev conjecture for conjugacy classes

Abstract: The Boston--Shalev conjecture (proved by Fulman and Guralnick in 2015) asserts that in any nonabelian simple group G in any nontrivial permutation action the proportion of derangements is at least some absolute constant c > 0. Since the set of derangements is closed under conjugacy it is also natural to ask about the proportion of *conjugacy classes* containing derangements. It is easy to see that this version of the question has a negative answer for alternating groups, but Guralnick and Zalesski asked whether it holds for groups of Lie type. I will outline a proof. We can also (1) extend to the case of almost simple groups, which is not true for the original conjecture, and (2) deduce the original conjecture, which amounts to a simplification of the Fulman--Guralnick proof. The key turns out to be a kind of analytic number theory for palindromic polynomials. This is ongoing work with Daniele Garzoni.

Title: Bounding Character Values at Regular Semisimple Elements

Abstract: If $\chi : G \to \mathbb{C}$ is an irreducible character of a finite group $G$ then one can ask how large the absolute value $|\chi(g)| \in \mathbb{R}$ at a given element $g \in G$ is. Typically one wants to obtain some $C \in \mathbb{R}$ such that the bound $|\chi(g)| < C$ holds as $g$ varies over a suitable subset of elements. In this talk we’ll try to explain why this question is important and discuss recent joint work with P. H. Tiep and M. Larsen obtaining new bounds in the case where $G$ is a finite reductive group and $g$ varies over the regular semisimple elements.

Title: Knutson's Conjecture on the representation ring

Abstract: Donald Knutson proposed the conjecture, later disproven and refined by Savitskii, that for every irreducible character of a finite group, there existed a virtual character such their tensor product was the regular character. In this talk, we disprove both this conjecture and its refinement. We then introduce the Knutson Index as a measure of the failure of Knutson's Conjecture and discuss its algebraic properties.

Title: Comparing $\mathfrak{sl}_2$-subalgebras and $\text{SL}_2$-subgroups of classical algebraic groups

Abstract: Let $G$ be a classical algebraic group, and take $\mathfrak{g}$ to be its Lie algebra. There is a Springer isomorphism from the variety of unipotent elements in $G$ to the unipotent elements in $\mathfrak{g}$. Hence it is natural to consider to what extent results which hold for nilpotent elements in $\mathfrak{g}$ hold for unipotent elements in $G$. In this talk I will discuss when there is a unique $\mathfrak{sl}_2$-subalgebra for a given nilpotent orbit in $\mathfrak{g}$, and compare this to when there is a unique $\text{SL}_2$-subgroup for a given unipotent orbit in $G$.