Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2015/ii/paper-3/15f/b/iii/solution

As printed, the equivalence needs a transitivity hypothesis. A group acting trivially on two points has , so is one-dimensional and irreducible, although the action is not even transitive.
Here is the intended result for a transitive action. The set is then finite, and, for a point stabilizer , its permutation character is . Frobenius reciprocity gives
The last equality follows because an -fixed vector has constant coefficients on each orbit. There is exactly one trivial constituent, since the action is transitive. Therefore, writing for the character of ,
By character orthogonality, is irreducible exactly when this equals . One stabilizer orbit is , so this happens exactly when is transitive on , equivalently when is two-transitive. Moreover is not trivial, since a transitive action has only one independent fixed vector in the whole permutation module.
The complete correction without assuming transitivity is also precise: is irreducible exactly for a two-transitive action or the exceptional action on two fixed points. Indeed for a finite set with orbits, the fixed subspace of has dimension . If and is irreducible, must itself be a one-dimensional trivial module, forcing and . If is infinite, is infinite-dimensional and cannot be irreducible: any nonzero vector generates a submodule of dimension at most .

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