$p$-vanishing conjugacy classes of symmetric groups

Abstract

For a prime $p$, we say that a conjugacy class of a finite group $G$ is $p$-vanishing if every irreducible character of $G$ of degree divisible by $p$ takes value 0 on that conjugacy class. In this paper we completely classify 2-vanishing and 3-vanishing conjugacy classes for the symmetric group and do some work in the classification of $p$-vanishing conjugacy classes of the symmetric group for $p\geq 5$. This answers a question by Navarro for $p=2$ and $p=3$ and partly answers it for $p\geq 5$.