Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-2-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2016/paper-2/10/a/solution

Since , a representation satisfies . Orthogonality gives , while the involution relation gives . Hence is a symmetric matrix, so .
Its entries obey
If , then ; putting and gives a reflection. If , the diagonal entries are independently : the opposite-sign cases are already included among these reflections, while equal signs give or . Faithfulness excludes , since . Therefore the orthogonal involutions of the plane give
The first is rotation by . The second is reflection in the line making angle with the first axis: the unit vector along that line is fixed, and its perpendicular is negated. These are all the nonidentity orthogonal transformations of order two in the plane.

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