Phase retrieval for nilpotent groups

Abstract

We study the phase retrieval property for orbits of general irreducible representations of nilpotent groups, for the classes of simply connected connected Lie groups, and for finite groups. We prove by induction that in the Lie group case, all irreducible representations do phase retrieval. For the finite group case, we mostly focus on $p$-groups. Here our main result states that every irreducible representation of an arbitrary $p$-group with exponent $p$ and size $\le p^{2+p/2}$ does phase retrieval. Despite the fundamental differences between the two settings, our inductive proof methods are remarkably similar.