Alternating sums over pi-subgroups

Abstract

Dade's conjecture predicts that if p is a prime, then the number of irreducible characters of a finite group of a given p-defect is determined by local subgroups. In this paper we replace $p$ by a set of primes pi and prove a pi-version of Dade's conjecture for pi-separable groups. This extends the (known) p-solvable case of the original conjecture and relates to a pi-version of Alperin's weight conjecture previously established by the authors.