Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-groups-and-representations-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2021/2/a/solution
Past exam of the groups and representations course of the University of Oxford 2021 2 a Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-25
The symmetric group has three conjugacy classes, determined by cycle type: the identity, three transpositions, and two three-cycles. Hence it has three complex irreducible representations. Two are the trivial representation and the sign representation . Their dimensions are one, so the sum of squares of irreducible representation dimensions gives , whence for the remaining representation .
Write on these classes. Orthogonality to and gives and . Thus , and the character table isThe character of a tensor product representation is the product of the factor characters. Thus , , and . These determine all the Clebsch-Gordan decomposition of group representations:
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