The Largest Irreducible Representations of Simple Groups

Answering a question of I. M. Isaacs, we show that the largest degree of irreducible complex representations of any finite non-abelian simple group can be bounded in terms of the smaller degrees. We also study the asymptotic behavior of this largest degree for finite groups of Lie type. Moreover, we show that for groups of Lie type, the Steinberg character has largest degree among all unipotent characters.Comment: 34 page

Conjectures of Alperin and Broue for 2-blocks with elementary abelian defect groups of order 8

Using the classification of finite simple groups we prove Alperin's weight conjecture and the character theoretic version of Broue's abelian defect group conjecture for 2-blocks of finite groups with an elementary abelian defect group of order 8.Comment: 40 page