Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-2-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2025/paper-2/9/d/solution

The symmetric group is generated by transpositions, each of order two. A group homomorphism to must map every transposition to zero, because the only target element annihilated by two is zero. Hence the map to is necessarily trivial.
For , the 3-cycles map to zero because their order divides three. All transpositions are conjugate group elements, and a map to an abelian group takes conjugate elements to the same value. That common value is either zero or one. Both choices work: they give the trivial map and the sign homomorphism, with an odd permutation sent to and an even permutation sent to .

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