A lower bound on the essential dimension of a connected linear group

Let G be a connected linear algebraic group defined over an algebraically closed field k and H be a finite abelian subgroup of G whose order is prime to char(k). We show that the essential dimension of G is bounded from below by rank(H) - rank C_G(H)^0, where rank C_G(H)^0 denotes the rank of the maximal torus in the centralizer C_G(H). This inequality, conjectured by J.-P. Serre, generalizes previous results of Reichstein -- Youssin (where char(k) is assumed to be 0 and C_G(H) to be finite) and Chernousov -- Serre (where H is assumed to be a 2-group).Comment: 21 page

Group actions and invariants in algebras of generic matrices

We show that the fixed elements for the natural GL_m-action on the universal division algebra UD(m,n) of m generic n x n matrices form a division subalgebra of degree n, assuming n >= 3 and 2 <= m <= n^2 - 2. This allows us to describe the asymptotic behavior of the dimension of the space of SL_m-invariant homogeneous central polynomials p(X_1,...,X_m) for n x n matrices. Here the base field is assumed to be of characteristic zero.Comment: 22 pages. Final version, to appear in Advances in Applied Mathematics (Amitai Regev issue). Theorem 1.3 has been strengthene