Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 July 2016
In 1981, Thompson proved that, if $n\geqslant 1$ is any integer and
$G$ is any finite subgroup of
$\text{GL}_{n}(\mathbb{C})$ , then
$G$ has a semi-invariant of degree at most
$4n^{2}$ . He conjectured that, in fact, there is a universal constant
$C$ such that for any
$n\in \mathbb{N}$ and any finite subgroup
$G<\text{GL}_{n}(\mathbb{C})$ ,
$G$ has a semi-invariant of degree at most
$Cn$ . This conjecture would imply that the
${\it\alpha}$ -invariant
${\it\alpha}_{G}(\mathbb{P}^{n-1})$ , as introduced by Tian in 1987, is at most
$C$ . We prove Thompson’s conjecture in this paper.