A Quiver Analogue of Higman's Conjecture

Abstract

An unresolved conjecture by Graham Higman states that for all $n\geq 1$ the number of conjugacy classes of the group of $n \times n$ unitriangular matrices with entries in the finite field $\mathbb{F}_q$ is a polynomial in $q$. In this paper we introduce a new quiver generalization of the conjecture. Motivated by this generalization, we prove that certain operations on quivers leave the relevant counts unchanged. Based on these invariance properties, we solve the introduced conjecture for quivers containing no path of length exceeding two, providing explicit formulas.