Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2019/ii/paper-3/19i/b/iii/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 ii Paper 3 19I b iii Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
Work with the selected transitive orbit . By Maschke's theorem, decompose its permutation character aswhere the are distinct nontrivial irreducible characters. Character orthogonality givesConsequently the augmentation summand is irreducible exactly when this inner product equals .
The double cosets are the -orbits on . Because acts transitively on , these in turn correspond to the -orbits on : move the first coordinate to the base point , after which its stabilizer is . One orbit is the diagonal. There are exactly two orbits precisely when is transitive on , equivalently when the action is two-transitive. Part (ii) therefore provesThis is the irreducible augmentation criterion for a transitive group action.
Finally, transitivity implies that the fixed-vector space consists only of constant vectors and has dimension one. If the nonzero representation were a trivial representation, it would contribute another fixed vector, a contradiction. Thus is not the trivial representation.
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