Induced conjugacy classes, prehomogeneous varieties, and canonical parabolic subgroups

We extend the notion of induced conjugacy classes in reductive groups, introduced by Lusztig and Spaltenstein for unipotent classes, to arbitrary classes. We study properties of equivariant fibrations of prehomogeneous affine spaces, especially the existence of relative invariants. We also detect prehomogeneous affine spaces as subquotients of canonical parabolic subgroups attached to elements of reductive groups in the sense of Jacobson-Morozov. These results are prerequisites for making the geometric expansion of the Arthur-Selberg trace formula more explicit.