The GAP Character Table Library

Description

This is Version 1.2 of the GAP Character Table Library, which is an add-on package for both GAP 3.4 and GAP 4.

There is a manual (available in HTML and PDF format) that describes the available functions in detail.

The manual of the GAP Character Table Library is intended for GAP 4.5, in particular the cross-references refer to the GAP 4.5 Reference Manual. So when using the new character table library with GAP 3.4, one should still consult the documentation of the character table library contained in the Reference Manual of GAP 3.4.

Authors

The data contained in the GAP Character Table Library have been contributed by various people. Important sources of the ordinary character tables are

the famous Atlas of Finite Groups (a list of contributors is in Chapter 8, paragraph 5 of this book), see
[CCNPW85] Conway, J. H., Curtis, R. T., Norton, S. P., Parker, R. A. and Wilson, R. A., Atlas of finite groups, Oxford University Press, Eynsham (1985), xxxiv+252 pages
(Maximal subgroups and ordinary characters for simple groups, With computational assistance from J. G. Thackray).
the character table library of the CAS system, see the article
[NPP84] Neubüser, J., Pahlings, H. and Plesken, W. (Atkinson, M. D., Ed.), CAS; design and use of a system for the handling of characters of finite groups, in Computational group theory (Durham, 1982), Academic Press, London (1984), 195–247.
and the character tables published in the book
[HP89] Holt, D. F. and Plesken, W., Perfect groups, The Clarendon Press Oxford University Press, Oxford Mathematical Monographs, New York (1989), xii+364 pages
(With an appendix by W. Hanrath, Oxford Science Publications).

Individual contributions are often listed in the ``InfoText´´s of the GAP library tables.

For the origin of the Brauer tables in the GAP Character Table Library, see the homepage of the Atlas of Brauer Characters.

The GAP interface and the data format used were developed by Thomas Breuer.

The differences w.r.t. the Character Table Library in earlier releases of GAP are listed here, in HTML and PDF format.

A preliminary version of a ``WWW table of contents´´ of the GAP Character Table Library can be found here.

Accompanying Material

The package manual lists several files showing character theoretic computations in the context of the GAP Character Table Library.

Feedback

Any comments are very welcome. If you have found important features missing or if there is a bug, let us know and we will try to address it in the next version of the GAP Character Table Library. Please send a short email to Thomas Breuer about it. This holds in particular if you have used the GAP Character Table Library to solve a problem.

You can also reach the GAP support group by sending an email to the general email address for problems with GAP.

Download

If you want to get Version 1.2 of the GAP Character Table Library then download the most appropriate of a gzipped tar archive (ca. 10.5 MB) or zoo archive (ca. 11.1 MB). Further information is contained in the README file.

(The README file and the archives are available also on the GAP servers.)