A. Chermak has recently proved that to each saturated fusion system over a finite p-group, there is a unique associated centric linking system. B. Oliver extended Chermak's proof by showing that all the higher cohomological obstruction groups relevant to unique existence of centric linking systems vanish. Both proofs indirectly assume the classification of finite simple groups. We show how to remove this assumption, thereby giving a classification-free proof of the Martino-Priddy conjecture concerning the p-completed classifying spaces of finite groups. Our main tool is a 1971 result of the first author on control of fixed points by p-local subgroups. This result is directly applicable for odd primes, and we show how a slight variation of it allows applications for p = 2 in the presence of offenders.

A rigid automorphism of a linking system is an automorphism that restricts to the identity on the Sylow subgroup. A rigid inner automorphism is conjugation by an element in the center of the Sylow subgroup. At odd primes, it is known that each rigid automorphism of a centric linking system is inner. We prove that the group of rigid outer automorphisms of a linking system at the prime $2$ is elementary abelian and that it splits over the subgroup of rigid inner automorphisms. In a second result, we show that if an automorphism of a finite group G restricts to the identity on the centric linking system for G, then it is of $p'$ -order modulo the group of inner automorphisms, provided G has no nontrivial normal $p'$ -subgroups. We present two applications of this last result, one to tame fusion systems.

A generalization of the Thompson transfer lemma and its various extensions, most recently due to Lyons, is proved in the context of saturated fusion systems. A strengthening of Alperin's fusion theorem is also given in this setting, following Alperin's own 'up and down' fusion.

To each pair consisting of a saturated fusion system over a p-group together with a compatible family of Külshammer-Puig cohomology classes, one can count weights in a hypothetical block algebra arising from these data. When the pair arises from a genuine block of a finite group algebra in characteristic p, the number of conjugacy classes of weights is supposed to be the number of simple modules in the block. We show that there is unique such pair associated with each Benson-Solomon exotic fusion system, and that the number of weights in a hypothetical Benson-Solomon block is 12, independently of the field of definition. This is carried out in part by listing explicitly up to conjugacy all centric radical subgroups and their outer automorphism groups in these systems.

Many of the conjectures of current interest in the representation theory of finite groups in characteristic p are local-to-global statements, in that they predict consequences for the representations of a finite group G given data about the representations of the p-local subgroups of G. The local structure of a block of a group algebra is encoded in the fusion system of the block together with a compatible family of Külshammer-Puig cohomology classes. Motivated by conjectures in block theory, we state and initiate investigation of a number of seemingly local conjectures for arbitrary triples (S, F , α) consisting of a saturated fusion system F on a finite p-group S and a compatible family α.