New condensation methods with applications to the computation of Brauer character tables

Condensation is a technique that can often predict a Brauer character table of a finite group with a very high degree of confidence, but without a proof of correctness. In this paper we describe a strategy that can give such a proof. We introduce and apply two novel condensation methods: virtual tensor condensation and the condensation of bilinear forms. We illustrate our strategy and new techniques with examples taken from our computation of the 5-modular Brauer character table of the sporadic simple Lyons group.