Udo Preiser

Binary polyhedral groups and Euclidean diagrams

Recently, J. McKay [7] has observed that the irreducible complex representations of the binary polyhedral groups can be arranged in order to form the vertices of a Euclidean diagram in such a way that the tensor product of any irreducible representation M with the standard two-dimensional representation is the direct sum of the irreducible representations which are the neighbors of M in the diagram, and he asked for an explanation. In this note, we will show that any self-dual two-dimensional representation gives rise to a generalized Euclidean diagram, and that this in fact can be used to give a proof of the classification theorem of the binary polyhedral groups which at the same time furnishes a list of the irreducible representations and also gives the minimal splitting field.

A characterization of PGL(2,q),q ODD

LetG be a finite group andA andB solvable subgroups ofG, such thatG=AB and 2 is the only common prime divisor ofA andB. Under suitable restrictions of the 2-structure ofA andB, it is shown that eitherG is solvable orG contains a solvable normal subgroupN, such thatG/N contains a normal subgroup, which is isomorphic to PGL(2,q),q odd.