Conjugacy classes of centralizers in unitary groups (1610.06728v2)

Abstract: Let $G$ be a group. Two elements $x,y \in G$ are said to be in the same $z$-class if their centralizers in $G$ are conjugate within $G$. Consider $\mathbb F$ a perfect field of characteristic $\neq 2$, which has a non-trivial Galois automorphism of order $2$. Further, suppose that the fixed field $\mathbb F_0$ has the property that it has only finitely many field extensions of any finite degree. In this paper, we prove that the number of $z$-classes in the unitary group over such fields is finite. Further, we count the number of $z$-classes in the finite unitary group $U_n(q)$, and prove that this number is same as that of $GL_n(q)$ when $q>n$.