Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2013
Let ${\rm F}$ be a non-Archimedean locally compact field of residue characteristic $p$, let ${\rm D}$ be a finite-dimensional central division ${\rm F}$-algebra and let ${\rm R}$ be an algebraically closed field of characteristic different from $p$. We define banal irreducible ${\rm R}$-representations of the group ${\rm G}={\rm GL}_{m}({\rm D})$. This notion involves a condition on the cuspidal support of the representation depending on the characteristic of ${\rm R}$. When this characteristic is banal with respect to ${\rm G}$, in particular when ${\rm R}$ is the field of complex numbers, any irreducible ${\rm R}$-representation of ${\rm G}$ is banal. In this article, we give a classification of all banal irreducible ${\rm R}$-representations of ${\rm G}$ in terms of certain multisegments, called banal. When ${\rm R}$ is the field of complex numbers, our method provides a new proof, entirely local, of Tadić’s classification of irreducible complex smooth representations of ${\rm G}$.