Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-short-options-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2023/2/c/i/solution

After the reduction in part (b), multiply by . The new bottom-left entry is , whose absolute value is strictly smaller than the previous :
Repeated Euclidean division must terminate because the nonnegative integers decrease strictly until zero. Thus a word in and their inverses gives a matrix with bottom-left entry zero. Its determinant is one, so the diagonal entries are equal and are either both or both :
Since , this final matrix belongs to . So does , proving

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