CALCULATING CHARACTERS OF P-GROUPS

A central problem in computational group theory is that of getting the table of ordinary characters for a finite group. The current technique (due to Dixon and Schneider) is based on an old idea of Burnside and takes no account of any special properties which the group may have. Over the last few years a number of very poverful techniques have been developed for computing with p-groups defined by a power-commutator presentation. In this paper a character table algorithm for such groups is presented. A trial implementation of this new algorithm indicates its superiority over the generalDixon-Schneider algorithm for p-groups having order greater than p12. © 1990, Academic Press Limited. All rights reserved.