Modular reduction of complex representations of finite reductive groups

Abstract: Given a complex representation of a finite group, Brauer and Nesbitt defined in 1941 its reduction mod p, obtaining a representation over the algebraic closure of $\mathbb{F}_p$. In 2021, Lusztig studied the characters obtained by reducing mod p an irreducible unipotent representation of a finite reductive group over $\mathbb{F}_p$. He gave a conjectural formula for this character as a linear combination of terms which had no explicit definition and were only known in some small-rank examples. In this paper we provide an explicit formula for these terms and prove Lusztig's conjecture, giving a formula for the reduction mod p of any unipotent representation of $G(\mathbb{F}_q)$ for q a power of p. We also propose a conjecture linking this construction to the full exceptional collection in the derived category of coherent sheaves on a partial flag variety constructed recently by Samokhin and van der Kallen.