EXTENSIONS OF CHARACTERS IN TYPE D AND THE INDUCTIVE MCKAY CONDITION, I

This is a contribution to the study of $\mathrm {Irr}(G)$ as an $\mathrm {Aut}(G)$ -set for G a finite quasisimple group. Focusing on the last open case of groups of Lie type $\mathrm {D}$ and $^2\mathrm {D}$ , a crucial property is the so-called $A'(\infty )$ condition expressing that diagonal automorphisms and graph-field automorphisms of G have transversal orbits in $\mathrm {Irr}(G)$ . This is part of the stronger $A(\infty )$ condition introduced in the context of the reduction of the McKay conjecture to a question about quasisimple groups. Our main theorem is that a minimal counterexample to condition $A(\infty )$ for groups of type $\mathrm {D}$ would still satisfy $A'(\infty )$ . This will be used in a second paper to fully establish $A(\infty )$ for any type and rank. The present paper uses Harish-Chandra induction as a parametrization tool. We give a new, more effective proof of the theorem of Geck and Lusztig ensuring that cuspidal characters of any standard Levi subgroup of $G=\mathrm {D}_{ l,\mathrm {sc}}(q)$ extend to their stabilizers in the normalizer of that Levi subgroup. This allows us to control the action of automorphisms on these extensions. From there, Harish-Chandra theory leads naturally to a detailed study of associated relative Weyl groups and other extendibility problems in that context.