Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-algebra-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2009/a/2/b/solution
Past exam of the algebra course of the University of Oxford 2009 A 2 b Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-31
The class sizes sum to . A degree-one character is a homomorphism into . The supplied has order four and , so are four distinct irreducible characters. A finite group has as many complex irreducible characters as conjugacy classes, so there are exactly two more. Their degrees satisfy , whose only positive-integer solution is .
The column orthogonality give . Each of the last three classes has centralizer order , already exhausted by the four degree-one rows. Thus both new rows vanish on .
To justify that their remaining values are real, put . The supplied values show , a normal subgroup of order nine, with . A group of order nine is Abelian, by the standard p-group center argument and the fact that a cyclic quotient by the center forces the group to be Abelian. If were cyclic of order nine, conjugation through would act by an automorphism of order dividing both four and , hence dividing two. Its nontrivial conjugacy classes could not have size four. Therefore .
Let map to a generator of , and let be its conjugation action on the two-dimensional vector space over . The two nonzero orbits have length four, so fixes no nonzero vector, while . Since has distinct roots in characteristic three, the involution is diagonalizable; the absence of a eigenvector gives . Thus conjugation by inverts every element of . Every element in is therefore conjugate to its inverse, so every character value there is real.
Write one new row as . Its orthogonality with the trivial row gives , so . Its squared character inner product one gives , so and . Thus are in some order. Column orthogonality with the identity column forces the other row's entries to be interchanged. Up to relabelling these two new characters, the completed character table isThe reality argument prevents an unjustified assumption when solving the orthogonality equations. This is character table from a cyclic quotient and two elementary-abelian orbits.
New to topics? Read the docs here!