On the faithful representations, of degree 2n, of certain extensions of 2-groups by orthogonal and symplectic groups

If R is a 2-group of symplectic type with exponent 4, then R is isomorphic to the extraspecial group , or to the central product 4 o 21+2n of a cyclic group of order 4 and an extraspecial group, with central subgroups of order 2 amalgamated. This paper gives an explicit description of a projective representation of the group A of automorphisms of R centralizing Z(R), obtained from a faithful representation of R of degree 2n. The 2-cocycle associated with this projective representation takes values which are powers of −1 if R is isomorphic to and powers of otherwise. This explicit description of a projective representation is useful for computing character values or computing with central extensions of A. Such central extensions arise naturally in Aschbacher's classification of the subgroups of classical groups.

On the cohomology of the sporadic simple group J4

In this paper we calculate part of the integral cohomology ring of the sporadic simple group J4; this group has order 221.33.5.7. 113.23.29.31.37.43. More precisely, we obtain all of the cohomology ring except for the 2-primary part. As the cohomology has already been written down [9] at the primes which divide the group order only once, we concentrate here on the primes 3 and 11. In both of these cases the Sylow p-subgroups are extraspecial of order p3 and exponent p. We use the method which identifies the p-primary cohomology with the ring of stable classes in the cohomology of a Sylow p-subgroup. The stable classes are all invariant under the action of the Sylow p-normalizer; and some time is spent finding invariant classes in the cohomology ring of , the extraspecial group. Section 2 studies the prime 11: the invariant classes are the stable classes, because the Sylow 11-subgroups have the Trivial Intersection (T.I.) property. In Section 3 we study the prime 3, and see that all conditions for invariant classes to be stable reduce to one condition.