Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2013/ib/paper-4/2g/solution

The conjugacy class of is its orbit under the conjugation action, and its stabilizer is the centralizer . The orbit-stabilizer theorem gives
By Lagrange's theorem, the order of the centralizer divides , so the index is a power of . A conjugacy class has size one exactly when its element belongs to the center of a group.
Separate these singleton classes in the class equation:
where the sum takes one representative of each nonsingleton conjugacy class. Every summand is divisible by . Thus , and the identity ensures . Consequently . This is the nontrivial center of a finite p-group property.

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