Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 138 6 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
Take andEvery involution in is a double transposition. They form one conjugacy class: an odd conjugator can be made even by multiplying by a transposition centralizing the source double transposition. Thus all order-two subgroups of are conjugate. Since , is a Sylow subgroup. A permutation normalizing fixes its unique common fixed letter, , and every even permutation of the other four letters permutes its three double transpositions. Hence . Any permutation centralizing fixes ; within it may exchange the two pairs and interchange letters in either pair, giving eight possibilities, of which exactly the four elements of are even. Thus . Since is abelian and contains , also .
The given single block of has identity and defect , since and is Sylow. By Brauer first main theorem, has exactly one block with defect .
Suppose a block idempotent had defect . Then is a nonzero idempotent in . A group algebra of a p-group in characteristic p is local, so this image is . But both the Brauer projections at and at retain exactly the basis elements of the same centralizer . ConsequentlyThus has the full Sylow defect , contradicting maximality of . These are the 2-modular defect groups of A5, and .