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Andy Putman
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I've been corresponding via email with the OP about this, and he asked me to post an answer summarizing what I told him. I apologize for the length of this answer -- this is really quite a long story. I also apologize for sometimes butchering people's names. I am copying this answer from a long document I sent the OP, and unfortunately autocorrect screws things up without telling me (eg it wants to call Steinberg "Sternberg", though I hope caught most of those occurrences). $\DeclareMathOperator{\Sp}{Sp} \DeclareMathOperator{\ESp}{ESp} \DeclareMathOperator{\SL}{SL} \newcommand\Z{\mathbb{Z}} \DeclareMathOperator{\HH}{H} \newcommand\tG{\widetilde{G}} \newcommand\tD{\widetilde{D}} \newcommand\Field{\mathbb{F}}$

For $\Sp_{2g}(\Z/2)$, the correct theorem is that $\HH_2(\Sp_{2g}(\Z/2)) = 0$ for $g \geq 4$. This should be attributed to Steinberg and is contained in the paper cited by the OP. More generally, Steinberg showed that a similar theorem holds for $\Sp_{2g}(\Field_q)$. What Stein did in the cited paper was show how to extend what Steinberg did to $\Sp_{2g}(\Z/k)$ where $k$ is not prime. They both in fact dealt not just with the symplectic group, but also with more general finite Chevalley groups.

Another good reference for Steinberg's work is sections 6 and 7 of Steinberg's Yale lecture notes, which were never published but which are available here.

It is not easy to extract the above homological statement from Steinberg and Stein's papers since they are written in the language of algebraic k-theory. What they are imitating is the calculation of $\HH_2(\SL_n(\Field_q))$ that is described in Milnor's book on algebraic k-theory, which I highly recommend reading.

To help you understand these papers, below I have written a guide to the calculation of $\HH_2(\SL_n(\Field_q))$ from Milnor's book. (nb: since this is long, I'm going to post it in stages so that my work isn't lost if things crash)


I will begin by recalling the theory of universal central extensions. Let $G$ be a group. A central extension of $G$ is a group $\tG$ together with a short exact sequence $$1 \longrightarrow C \longrightarrow \tG \longrightarrow G \longrightarrow 1$$ such that $C$ is contained in the center of $\tG$. This central extension is a universal central extension if for any other central extension $$1 \longrightarrow C' \longrightarrow \tG' \longrightarrow G \longrightarrow 1,$$ there exists a unique homomorphism $\tG \rightarrow \tG'$ such that the diagram $\require{AMScd}$ $$\begin{CD} 1 @>>> C @>>> \tG @>>> G @>>> 1 \\ @. @VVV @VVV @VV{=}V @. \\ 1 @>>> C' @>>> \tG' @>>> G @>>> 1 \end{CD}$$ commutes. The usual argument shows that universal central extensions are unique if they exist, but they might not exist. The following theorem summarizes their properties. A proof of it can be found in Theorem 5.7 and Corollary 5.8 of Milnor's book

Theorem 1: Let $G$ be a group. Then $G$ has a universal central extension $$1 \longrightarrow C \longrightarrow \tG \longrightarrow G \longrightarrow 1$$ if and only if $\HH_1(G;\Z) = 0$, in which case we have $C \cong \HH_2(G;\Z)$.

For perfect groups, this reduces the computation of $\HH_2(G;\Z)$ to the construction of the universal central extension of $G$.


Andy Putman
  • 44.8k
  • 14
  • 186
  • 272