Drinfeld, at the age of 20, discovered that the discrete series representations of the finite group 
 can be realized in the 
-adic cohomology of the curve defined over 
, 
 Deligne and Lusztig were inspired by this result to associate algebraic varieties to any finite group of Lie type and were extremely successful in using them to construct all representations of such a finite group. We will explain their beautiful ideas and supply concrete examples of Deligne-Lusztig curves. These curves themselves also enjoy extremal geometric and arithmetic properties, which, among others, lead us to contemplate on the answer to life, the universe and everything.
This is a note I prepared for my third Trivial Notions talk at Harvard, Fall 2013. Our main sources are [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] and [6].
My talk consists of two parts. In the first part I shall define our trivial notion in the title. In second part I shall explain how this definition makes sense.
This completes the first part of my talk. Surprisingly we still have enough time to do the second part. Now let us start with a completely different story.
Finite groups of Lie typesAccording to the classification of finite simple groups, except 26 sporadic groups, all finite simple groups fit into three infinite series
 (of prime order);
 (
);A finite group of Lie type, as you can imagine, is a finite group analogue of Lie groups over real or complex numbers.
, where 
 is a prime power. It is the fixed points of the standard Frobenius endomorphism 
 by raising each entry to the 
-th power, where 
 is an algebraic closure of 
.
 of an endomorphism 
, where 
 is any reductive group over 
 and a certain power of 
 is a standard Frobenius 
.
If you never care about algebraic varieties in positive characteristics, this probably serves as a reason that you probably should. After all these finite groups of Lie type form the major bulk of the building blocks of any finite group!
People familiar with Lie groups shall recall that the reductive groups over an algebraically closed field 
 are classified by certain combinatoric data called root data, which are, roughly speaking, instructions telling you how to glue the building blocks 
 (and tori) to obtain 
. These fit into 4 infinite series 
, 
, 
, 
 and five exceptional ones 
, 
, 
, 
, 
 according to the associated Dynkin diagram (please refer to the picture on the wall outside 507 if you have good eyesight). For example, 
 consists of the general linear group 
 and its variations  
, 
, and so on.
.  For 
, we obtain 
 and 
 is the (unique) unitary group over 
 (
). It is usually denoted by 
. The endomorphism 
 induces the involution of the Dynkin diagram  
.
In general, such a endomorphism 
 induces an automorphism of the Dynkin diagram with arrow disregarded. Besides the 
-points of the split groups (a.k.a., Chevalley groups), we have new series of finite groups of Lie type:
, 
, 
, 
. These are 
-points of the quasi-split forms of 
, 
, 
, 
, known as Steinberg groups;
: Suzuki groups, exist only when 
;
: Ree groups of type 
, exist only when 
;
: Ree groups of type 
, exist only when 
.For the last three groups, the involution on the Dynkin diagram does not preserve the length of the roots and they are not 
-points of any reductive groups! (You may want to think of them as points of a reductive group defined over a field of 
 or 
 elements, which of course does not make sense).
Now I have described the classification of finite groups of Lie type. You may find it interesting or simply don't care. But it will certainly become more interesting when a finite group 
 acts on objects that you care more about, e.g., topological spaces, manifolds, algebraic varieties... Linearizing such an action gives rise to a linear representation of 
. So how can we understand all the irreducible representations of 
 when 
 is a finite group of Lie type? Let us consider the simplest (but already rich enough) example 
.
Representations of 
Over the complex numbers, the representation theory of any finite group 
 is rather clean: any finite dimensional representation of 
 decomposes as a direct sum of irreducible subrepresentations. A representation 
 is characterized by its character 
. 
 is irreducible if and only if 
. The number of irreducible representations of 
 is the same as the number of conjugacy classes of 
. And so on.
The conjugacy classes of 
 can be classified using elementary methods. For simplicity we shall assume that 
 is odd. The representatives can be chosen as

Notice 
 acts on 
 and produces a nonsplit torus 
. Restricting to the norm one elements, we obtain 
, a nonsplit torus of order 
. Over 
, its elements are conjugate to elements of the form 
.
So in total we have 
 conjugacy classes. How do we construct 
 irreducible representations of 
? One usual way to build the character table of any finite group 
 is to try to induce known representations of subgroups of 
. A nice subgroup is given by the split diagonal torus 
, which is a cyclic group of order 
. The irreducible representations of 
 are simply the 
 characters 
. But 
 itself is too small which makes 
 huge and far from irreducible. Instead we can view 
 as a character on the Borel subgroup 
 (trivial on the unipotent subgroup 
). The resulting representation produced this way is called a parabolic induction.
, 
 is irreducible of dimension 
 (principal series representations).
 but 
, 
 is a direct sum of two irreducible representations of dimension 
 (half principal series representations).
, 
 is a direct sum of the trivial representation and an irreducible representation of dimension 
 (the Steinberg representation).This gives us 
 irreducible representations and there are 
 (about half) left to be discovered. It turns out 
 of them has dimension 
 (discrete series representations) and 2 of them has dimension 
 (half discrete series representations). Looking at the number 
, one is tempted to induce a character of 
 to construct the rest, but since there is no Borel subgroup containing it, there is no parabolic induction and the naive induction is more complicated than our expectation. Of course, one can  mess around the character table and construct the discrete series representations using brutal force; but life would be harder for groups other than 
.
The Drinfeld curveIf you are Drinfeld, then at this stage you must have realized that the right thing to look at is the affine curve 
 defined by the equation 
 What is nice about it? First of all, the group 
 acts on it by 
. More interestingly, it admits the action of 
 given by the linear transformation 
 Indeed, 
 by characteristic 
 miracle and so fixes the determinant 
! These two actions commute with each other and produce a large group of automorphisms of 
.
 of the curve 
 has genus 
. But 
 (indeed, a large group of order 
 acts on 
) grows much quickly than 
! So when 
 is large, 
 is an example of curves in positive characteristic violating the Hurwitz bound 
 for curves 
 with 
 in characteristic 0. So the answer to life, the universe and everything may be something different if the universe has positive characteristic.
Let 
 be 
-adic etale cohomology groups with compact support of 
. Then the group 
 naturally acts on 
.
 be a character. We define the Deligne-Lusztig induction of 
 to be 
, a virtual character of 
. Here 
 denotes the 
-isotypic component of 
.
So we successfully "induce" a character of 
 to obtain a (virtual) character of 
. It behaves much nicer than the naive induction from 
 to 
.
. Notice 
 gives an isomorphism 
. So we have 
 by excision. 
 and 
 for 
. So 
 as a 
-representation. 
 is simply a finite set of points, so 
 and 
 acts on it by permutation. This permutation action is the same as the left action of 
 on 
, hence 
, which is exactly 
! In particular, 
 has degree 
.
, then a fixed point formula of Deligne-Lusztig shows that 
, whcih is zero since 
. Therefore the trace of any element 
 on 
 is zero if  
, hence as a 
-virtual representation, 
 is a multiple of the regular representation 
. In particular, every 
-isotypic component the same degree, which is 
 for 
. Therefore 
 is a degree 
 representation of 
. It turns out to be irreducible when 
 and is a direct sum of two representations of dimension 
 when 
. These are exactly the discrete series representations of 
!
The discrete series representations have been realized in the cohomology of 
. Contemplating on this beautiful example, the following geometric picture emerges: the group 
 acts on 
 "horizontally" and 
 acts on 
 "vertically" by permuting the points in the fiber of 
. One should really think of 
 as the flag variety of 
 and 
 is a finite covering with the covering group the nonsplit torus 
.
Deligne-Lusztig varietiesWe come back to the general consideration of finite groups of Lie type 
. Deligne and Lusztig generalized Drinfeld's construction to associate varieties to any such 
.
  Let 
 be a 
-stable maximal torus and 
 be a 
-stable Borel containing 
 (their existence is ensured by Lang's theorem). Let 
 be the Weyl group. All Borel subgroups of 
 are conjugate: so the conjugate action of 
 on the set of Borel subgroups of 
 is transitive and the stabilizer the action of on 
 is simply 
 itself. Therefore we have a bijection 
 Now the Bruhat decomposition 
 tells us that 
 We say the two Borel subgroups 
 and 
 are in relative position 
, where 
 is the image of 
 in 
. The nice thing is that 
 itself is a projective variety over 
. We cut out a locally closed subvariety 
 (Deligne-Lusztig variety) consisting of Borel subgroups 
 such that 
 and 
 that are in relative position 
. In other words, 
 It is a smooth quasi-projective (indeed, quasi-affine, and conjecturally, affine) variety of dimension 
. This gives a stratification 
  Notice the left action of 
 doesn't change the relative position, hence 
 acts on each 
 from the left, which is what we want.
  Let 
 be the unipotent radical of 
. Then 
 is a 
-torsor: 
 normalizes 
 and acts on 
 from the right. We define similarly a locally closed subvariety 
 Then 
 is indeed a 
-torsor, where 
. Now we can play the same game by "inducing" a character 
 of the torus 
 to obtain a virtual character 
 of 
 using the cohomology 
 of the Deligne-Lusztig variety 
.
. Then the diagonal torus 
 and the standard Borel are 
-stable. The Weyl group 
, with the nontrivial element 
 represented by 
 and maps the standard Borel to the opposite Borel, the subgroup of lower triangular matrices. The elements of 
 can be identified as complete flags 
, in other words, points in 
. Two flags are in relative position 
 if and only if 
, in other words, two points in 
 are in relative position 
 if and only they are distinct. In particular 
,  and 
. An element in 
 is nothing but a complete flag together with two vectors 
 and 
 such that 
. Two marked flags are in relative position 
 if and only if 
. Therefore 
 consists of marked flags such that 
, i.e., 
. Writing 
, this gives exactly 
 and recovers Drinfeld's ingenious construction. In this case 
 is exactly the nonsplit torus 
.
 and 
 a permuatation of length 
. One similarly obtains that 
 and 
 is given by the equation 
.
, 
 is a covering map between zero-dimensional varieties. Then 
 is simply the usual parabolic induction of a character 
 of 
.
By carefully studying the geometry of the varieties 
 and 
. Deligne-Lusztig proved:
 appears in 
 for some 
 and 
. Moreover, 
. In particular, when 
 is in general position, i.e., no nontrivial elements of 
 fixes 
, one of 
 is an irreducible representation of 
.
, the nontrivial element 
 acts by 
. The above theorem coincides with the fact that 
 (discrete series) and 
 (principle series) is irreducible whenever 
.
To complete the construction of all irreducible representations of any finite group of Lie type, it "suffices" to decompose each 
 when 
 is not in general position. This task is far from trivial but was eventually done by Lusztig in 80's in a series of papers and books.
Deligne-Lusztig curvesFinally, let us consider the special case when dimension of 
 is one-dimensional. This corresponds to the case 
 is a simple reflection. The relevant groups are groups of 
-rank 1. There are only four such groups: 
, 
, 
, 
. Let 
, then 
 is a smooth projective curve over 
. One can compute the Euler characteristic of 
 (hence the genus) and the number of rational points of 
 (= 
) from the finite group data using the fixed point formula. We gather the results here (c.f., [7]).
: 
.
: The Fermat curve 
 of degree 
. It has genus 
 and 
 
-points.
: The Deligne-Lusztig curve of Suzuki type (DLS). It has genus 
  and 
 
-points.
: The Deligne-Lusztig curve of Ree type (DLR). It has genus 
 and 
 
-points.Now there comes no surprise that these curves admits a large number of automorphisms. A theorem of Stichtenoth asserts that 
 except 
 is Fermat curve 
. A theorem of Henn shows that 
 except the Fermat curve 
, the DLS, the hyperelliptic curve 
 (
) and the curve 
 (
, 
). Amazingly enough you can go home and check by hand that the Deligne-Lusztig curves 
, DLS, DLR are all maximal curves: they all achieve the Hasse-Weil bound 
 for the number of 
-rational points!
[1]Representations of reductive groups over finite fields, Ann. of Math. (2) 103 (1976), no.1, 103--161.
[2]Finite groups of Lie type, John Wiley \& Sons Inc., New York, 1985.
[3]Representations of finite groups of Lie type, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991.
[4]Representations of $\rm SL_2(\Bbb F_q)$, Springer-Verlag London Ltd., London, 2011.
[5]Modular representations of finite groups of Lie type, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006.
[6]A note on superspecial and maximal curves, Bull. Iranian Math. Soc 39 (2013), 405-413.
[7]Deligne-Lusztig varieties and group codes, Coding theory and algebraic geometry (Luminy, 1991), Lecture Notes in Math., 1518 Springer, 1992, 63--81.