Unitriangular basic sets for blocks of the symmetric and alternating groups of small weights

Abstract

We study the existence of unitriangular basic sets for the symmetric group which behave nicely with respect to the Mullineux involution. Such sets give a natural labelling for the modular irreducible representations. We show that, for any odd prime p, the p-blocks of the symmetric group with weight 2 have stable unitriangular basic sets which we describe by studying the combinatorics of partitions in these blocks.