In mathematics, the Alvis–Curtis duality is a duality operation on the characters of a reductive group over a finite field, introduced by Charles W. Curtis ( 1980) and studied by his student Dean Alvis ( 1979). Kawanaka ( 1981, 1982) introduced a similar duality operation for Lie algebras.

Alvis–Curtis duality has order 2 and is an isometry on generalized characters.

Carter (1985, 8.2) discusses Alvis–Curtis duality in detail.

The dual ζ* of a character ζ of a finite group G with a split BN-pair is defined to be

${\displaystyle \zeta ^{*}=\sum _{J\subseteq R}(-1)^{\vert J\vert }\zeta _{P_{J}}^{G}}$

Here the sum is over all subsets J of the set R of simple roots of the Coxeter system of G. The character ζ
_PJ is the truncation of ζ to the parabolic subgroup P_J of the subset J, given by restricting ζ to P_J and then taking the space of invariants of the unipotent radical of P_J, and ζ^G
_PJ is the induced representation of G. (The operation of truncation is the adjoint functor of parabolic induction.)

• The dual of the trivial character 1 is the Steinberg character.
• Deligne & Lusztig (1983) showed that the dual of a Deligne–Lusztig character R^θ
  _T is ε_Gε_TR^θ
  _T.
• The dual of a cuspidal character χ is (–1)^|Δ|χ, where Δ is the set of simple roots.
• The dual of the Gelfand–Graev character is the character taking value |Z^F|q^l on the regular unipotent elements and vanishing elsewhere.

• Alvis, Dean (1979), "The duality operation in the character ring of a finite Chevalley group", Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, New Series, 1 (6): 907–911, doi: 10.1090/S0273-0979-1979-14690-1, ISSN  0002-9904, MR  0546315
• Carter, Roger W. (1985), Finite groups of Lie type. Conjugacy classes and complex characters., Pure and Applied Mathematics (New York), New York: John Wiley & Sons, ISBN  978-0-471-90554-7, MR  0794307
• Curtis, Charles W. (1980), "Truncation and duality in the character ring of a finite group of Lie type", Journal of Algebra, 62 (2): 320–332, doi: 10.1016/0021-8693(80)90185-4, ISSN  0021-8693, MR  0563231
• Deligne, Pierre; Lusztig, George (1982), "Duality for representations of a reductive group over a finite field", Journal of Algebra, 74 (1): 284–291, doi: 10.1016/0021-8693(82)90023-0, ISSN  0021-8693, MR  0644236
• Deligne, Pierre; Lusztig, George (1983), "Duality for representations of a reductive group over a finite field. II", Journal of Algebra, 81 (2): 540–545, doi: 10.1016/0021-8693(83)90202-8, ISSN  0021-8693, MR  0700298
• Kawanaka, Noriaki (1981), "Fourier transforms of nilpotently supported invariant functions on a finite simple Lie algebra", Japan Academy. Proceedings. Series A. Mathematical Sciences, 57 (9): 461–464, doi: 10.3792/pjaa.57.461, ISSN  0386-2194, MR  0637555
• Kawanaka, N. (1982), "Fourier transforms of nilpotently supported invariant functions on a simple Lie algebra over a finite field", Inventiones Mathematicae, 69 (3): 411–435, doi: 10.1007/BF01389363, ISSN  0020-9910, MR  0679766, S2CID  119866092