Nilpotent orbits: finiteness, separability and Howe's conjecture

Abstract

This paper is about nilpotent orbits of reductive groups over local non-Archimedean fields. In this paper we will try to identify for which groups there are only finitely many nilpotent orbits, for which groups the nilpotent orbits are separable and for which groups Howe's conjecture holds. For general reductive groups we get some partial results. For split reductive groups we get a classification in terms of the root data and the characteristic of the underlying local field.