Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2015/ii/paper-3/15f/b/iii/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2015 ii Paper 3 15F b iii Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-06
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 givesThe 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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