Dimension Data, Local and Global Conjugacy in Reductive Groups

TL;DR

This paper investigates the extent to which dimension data determines subgroup conjugacy in reductive groups, providing counterexamples where non-conjugate subgroups share identical dimension data, thus challenging previous assumptions.

Contribution

It demonstrates that for certain types of simple subgroups, dimension data does not guarantee conjugacy, revealing limitations in the strong rigidity results for reductive groups.

Findings

Existence of non-conjugate subgroups with identical dimension data in SO(2N)

Counterexamples for simple groups of specific types (A_{4n}, B_{2n}, etc.)

Local conjugacy does not imply global conjugacy in these cases.

Abstract

Let G be a connected reductive group (over $\mathbb{C}$) and H a connected semisimple subgroup. The dimension data of H (realative to its given embedding in G) is the collection of the numbers $\{{\rm dim} V^{H}\}$, where V runs over all the finite dimensional representations of G. By a Theorem of Larsen-Pink ([L-P90]), the dimension data determines H up to isomorphism, and if G = GL (n) even up to conjugacy. Professor Langlands raised the question as to whether the strong (conjugacy) result holds for arbitrary G. In this paper We provided the following (negative) answer: If H is simple of type A_{4 n}, $B_{2 n} (n \geq 2)$, $C_{2 n} (n \geq 2)$, E_{6}, E_{8}, F_{4} and G_{2}, then there exist (for suitable $N$) pairs of embeddings i and i' of H into $G = SO (2 N)$ such that there image i (H) and i' (H) have the same dimension data but are not conjugate. In fact we have shown that i (H) and i' (H) are \emph{locally conjugate}, i.e., that i (h) and i' (h) are conjugate in G for all semisimple $h \in H$. If one assumes functoriality, this result will furnish the failure of multiplicity one for automorphic forms on such G over global fields. Such things are known in the disconnected cases, especially when H is finite, as in the works of Blasius [Blasius94] for $SL (n) (n \geq 3)$ and Gan-Gurevich-Jiang2002 ([Gan]) for G_{2}.