Fixed point spaces, primitive character degrees and conjugacy class sizes

Abstract

Let G be a finite group that acts on a nonzero finite dimensional vector space V over an arbitrary field. Assume that V is completely reducible as a G-module, and that G fixes no nonzero vector of V. We show that some element g ∈ G has a small fixed-point space in V. Specifically, we prove that we can choose g so that dim C V (g) < (1/p)dim V, where p is the smallest prime divisor of |G|.