Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-2-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2021/paper-2/10/c/solution

The elements commute with the whole quaternion group, so they form singleton classes. Each of the three remaining pairs is a conjugacy class: for example conjugation by sends to , and likewise cyclically. No such pair can mix with a different pair, because the quotient by is abelian and its cosets , , are preserved by conjugation. Hence
For a finite group over , the number of inequivalent irreducible representations equals the number of conjugacy classes, so there are five. The sum of squares of irreducible representation dimensions is the group order, eight. With five positive integer dimensions, the only possibility is
Indeed five one-dimensional contributions give five, and replacing one by a two-dimensional contribution adds exactly three; any further enlargement would exceed eight. These are the dimensions used in the character table of the quaternion group.

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