Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2004/iii/paper-60/1/c/solution

Conjugating the coordinate reflection by the rotations supplies reflections in the other two coordinates. The quarter-turns, together with those reflections, also supply coordinate transpositions. Consequently the represented group consists of all signed permutation matrices, the full symmetry group of a cube of order .
Let be any real or complex matrix commuting with the group representation. Commutation with the three independent coordinate reflections forces all off-diagonal entries of to vanish. Commutation with the quarter-turn about the first axis equates its second and third diagonal entries, and the quarter-turn about the second axis equates its first and third entries. Therefore
For completeness, if the complexified group representation had a proper invariant subspace, its orthogonal complement would be invariant too, since the generating matrices are unitary. The orthogonal projection onto that subspace would be a nonscalar commuting matrix, contradicting the calculation. Thus the complexification is irreducible, proving absolute irreducibility of the real group representation.

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