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Upper motives of algebraic groups and incompressibility of Severi-Brauer varieties

Let G be a semisimple affine algebraic group of inner type over a field F. We write C for the class of all finite direct products of projective G-homogeneous F-varieties. We determine the structure of the Chow motives with coefficients in a finite field of the varieties in C. More precisely, it is known that the motive of any variety in C decomposes (in a unique way) into a sum of indecomposable motives, and we describe the indecomposable summands which appear in the decompositions. In the case where G is the group of automorphisms of a given central simple F-algebra A, for any variety in the class C (which includes the generalized Severi-Brauer varieties of the algebra A) we determine its canonical dimension at any prime p. In particular, we find out which varieties in C are p-incompressible. If A is a division algebra of degree p^n for some n, then the list of p-incompressible varieties includes the generalized Severi-Brauer variety X(p^m; A) of ideals of reduced dimension p^m for m=0,1,...,n.