Tensor products of unipotent characters of general linear groups over finite fields

Abstract

We study multiplicities of unipotent characters in tensor products of unipotent characters of GL(n,q). We prove that these multiplicities are polynomials in q with non-negative integer coefficients. We study the degree of these polynomials and give a necessary and sufficient condition in terms of the representation theory of symmetric groups for these polynomials to be non-zero.