Computations of generating lengths with GAP

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss how to apply GAP to do computations in modular representation theory. Of particular interest is the generating number of a group algebra, which measures the failure of the generating hypothesis in the stable module category. We introduce a computational method to do this calculation and present it in pseudo-code. We have also implemented the algorithm in GAP and managed to do computations of examples that we were not able to do before. The computations lead to conjectures on the ghost numbers of the groups $Q_8$ and $A_4$.