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/d/solution

For a one-dimensional character, write and . Since , the relations require . Also gives . The four sign choices therefore supply all four linear characters.
For the remaining two-dimensional character , its value at the identity is two. Column orthogonality between the identity and gives , so . Between the identity and each of the other classes, the four linear-character values sum to zero, forcing the remaining character values to vanish. Thus the character table is
Here column orthogonality is the standard finite-group character theorem for . The rows also have unit norm and are mutually orthogonal in the character inner product with the displayed class-size weights. This completes the character table of the quaternion group.

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