CONJUGACY OF LEVI SUBGROUPS OF REDUCTIVE GROUPS AND A GENERALIZATION TO LINEAR ALGEBRAIC GROUPS Maarten Solleveld IMAPP, Radboud Universiteit Heyendaalseweg 135, 6525AJ Nijmegen, the Netherlands email:
[email protected] Abstract. We investigate Levi subgroups of a connected reductive algebraic group G, over a ground field K. We parametrize their conjugacy classes in terms of sets of simple roots and we prove that two Levi K-subgroups of G are rationally conjugate if and only if they are geometrically conjugate. These results are generalized to arbitrary connected linear algebraic K-groups. In that setting the appropriate analogue of a Levi subgroup is derived from the notion of a pseudo-parabolic subgroup. 1. Introduction Let G be a connected reductive group over a field K. It is well-known that conjugacy classes of parabolic K-subgroups correspond bijectively to set of simple roots (relative to K). Further, two parabolic K-subgroups are G(K)-conjugate if and only if they are conjugate by an element of G(K). In other words, rational and geometric conjugacy classes coincide. By a Levi K-subgroup of G we mean a Levi factor of some parabolic K-subgroup of G. Such groups play an important role in the representation theory of reduc- tive groups, via parabolic induction. Conjugacy of Levi subgroups, also known as association of parabolic subgroups, has been studied less. Although their rational conjugacy classes are known (see [Cas, Proposition 1.3.4]), it appears that so far these have not been compared with geometric conjugacy classes. Let ∆K be the set of simple roots for G with respect to a maximal K-split torus S.