Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2016/ia/paper-1/2c/solution

A counterclockwise planar rotation matrix has the form
To recover this form from preservation of the Euclidean norm, let be the columns of . Applying the norm condition to the two coordinate unit vectors gives . Applying it to their sum gives
so . The columns are an orthonormal basis, and : is an orthogonal matrix.
Write . There are two perpendicular unit vectors available for , namely . The first gives determinant , the second . The positive determinant hypothesis selects the first. A norm-preserving planar map with positive determinant is a rotation.
For the commutation condition, write
Direct matrix multiplication gives
Equality forces and , so, with and ,
If , take and . Otherwise set and choose , . Then
This describes the centralizer of a planar quarter-turn. Its nonzero elements act as a rotation followed by a uniform scaling, just as multiplication by a nonzero complex number does.

New to topics? Read the docs here!