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Main Authors: Lewis, Joel Brewster, Vinroot, C. Ryan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.02725
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author Lewis, Joel Brewster
Vinroot, C. Ryan
author_facet Lewis, Joel Brewster
Vinroot, C. Ryan
contents We count factorizations of Singer cycles as products of reflections in the families of special and general unitary and linear groups over a finite field. In the case of minimum-length factorizations, the resulting answer is a striking product formula resembling the count for minimum-length factorizations of Coxeter elements into reflections in complex reflections groups. Moreover, for minimum length, the answers for the unitary and linear groups exhibit the phenomenon of Ennola duality, where the number of factorizations in a unitary group over the field $\mathbb{F}_q$ is given by replacing `$q$' with `$-q$' in the corresponding answer for a linear group. We use the character theory of these groups to make this count, and in particular we employ the Deligne--Lusztig theory of characters for finite reductive groups.
format Preprint
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institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Counting factorizations of Singer cycles in linear and unitary groups
Lewis, Joel Brewster
Vinroot, C. Ryan
Combinatorics
Representation Theory
We count factorizations of Singer cycles as products of reflections in the families of special and general unitary and linear groups over a finite field. In the case of minimum-length factorizations, the resulting answer is a striking product formula resembling the count for minimum-length factorizations of Coxeter elements into reflections in complex reflections groups. Moreover, for minimum length, the answers for the unitary and linear groups exhibit the phenomenon of Ennola duality, where the number of factorizations in a unitary group over the field $\mathbb{F}_q$ is given by replacing `$q$' with `$-q$' in the corresponding answer for a linear group. We use the character theory of these groups to make this count, and in particular we employ the Deligne--Lusztig theory of characters for finite reductive groups.
title Counting factorizations of Singer cycles in linear and unitary groups
topic Combinatorics
Representation Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.02725