Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2022 ia Paper 3 5E Solution Created 2026-09-23 Updated 2026-09-25
A group action of on is a map such that and . The orbit and stabilizer of areFor a finite group, the mapis a well-defined bijection from the left cosets of to . Each coset has elements, so the orbit-stabilizer theorem is
The Cauchy theorem for groups says that if a prime number divides , then has an element of order . To prove it, letThe first entries determine the last, so , which is divisible by . The cyclic group acts on by cyclically rotating the entries; rotation preserves the product condition becauseEvery orbit has size one or . The fixed points are exactly the tuples with . Their number is therefore divisible by . Since the identity gives one fixed point, there is another, and its entry has order .
Now let . Cauchy's theorem gives a subgroup of order . Let act by the conjugation action on the set of subgroups of order . It fixes . If it also fixed , then would normalize ; since , the product would be a subgroup of order , which is impossible. Every other -orbit in therefore has size , soDistinct members of share only the identity and each contributes ten nonidentity elements. Hence , forcing . Thus is a normal subgroup.
Conjugation now defines a group homomorphismBecause , its automorphism group has order . By the Lagrange theorem, the image has order dividing both and , so the image is trivial and lies in the center of . Cauchy's theorem also supplies of order . If generates , then and commute and has order . Therefore
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2024 iii Paper 151 3 Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
For , the square-zero ideal condition givesThus the square-zero unit subgroup is abelian, andis a group isomorphism from the additive group of .
Use the specified ring isomorphism . For , choose a lift and define for . Two lifts differ by an element of , whose product with vanishes, so this is well defined. Right multiplication is handled identically. The two actions commute by associativity, making a bimodule. If lifts , then is a unit: a lift of makes both and elements of , hence units, and a ring element with both a left and a right inverse is invertible. Conjugation therefore definesChanging by an element of does not change this expression because . Moreover,so is an isomorphism of -modules for these conjugation actions.
Let be reduction on unit groups, and define as the inverse image of the distinguished subgroup . Every has a unit lift by the preceding argument, and the kernel consists exactly of the units congruent to , namely . Multiplication in therefore gives the group extensionChoose a set-theoretic section with . Its extension cocyclesatisfies the two-cocycle identity by associativity. A different section changes by a group coboundary, so second group cohomology classifies group extensions gives a well-defined classThe same construction for gives , an extension cocycle , and .
The answer to the final question is no. An abstract ring isomorphism need not carry the distinguished ideal to , need not induce the identity under the two chosen identifications of the quotient rings with , and need not induce the prescribed -module isomorphism . Hence it need not give an isomorphism of the two displayed group extensions, so it imposes no equality . That equality does hold if the ring isomorphism has all three compatibility properties, because it then carries one extension cocycle to the other up to a group coboundary.
Write . If is the identity element of , then . Also, for ,The middle equality uses associativity and the inverse element rule . Thus this is a left group action, the conjugation action of on itself.
Use the fact that is a normal subgroup to move a factor of past a factor of . For and ,whileThe identity element belongs to . Hence is a subgroup, by the subgroup test. This proves the product of a subgroup with a normal subgroup construction; need not be a normal subgroup.
For each , conjugation maps to itself and respects its multiplication. The inverse of is , so both are group automorphisms of .
The printed formula requires a composition convention. For the printed , ordinary function composition givesIndeed, . Thus the displayed assignment is a group antihomomorphism with the usual multiplication in the automorphism group. It is a group homomorphism if the automorphisms are written as right operators and multiplied in the corresponding reverse order; this is precisely why right conjugation reverses composition.
With the usual left function composition, the corresponding group homomorphism is insteadDirect expansion gives . This states the intended conjugation action without silently reversing the order in the printed formula.
Put , the normal subgroup of order . By Cauchy's theorem for finite groups, contains an element of order two. Such an element cannot belong to the odd-order subgroup . Thus and , giving the semidirect productEvery automorphism of a finite cyclic group sends to for a unit modulo . The relation forces the conjugation action of to square to the identity:The Chinese remainder theorem identifies a congruence class modulo with its pair of classes modulo and . In each of these prime fields, the factorization forces or . The choices are independent, giving exactly four homomorphisms from a finite cyclic group . Explicitly,The factors and of are preserved by every automorphism, since each is its unique subgroup of that order. The four conjugation actions therefore give:
- : the action is trivial on both factors, so , by cyclicity of a product of two finite cyclic groups.
- : the action inverts both factors, so is the dihedral group .
- : it is the identity modulo and inversion modulo , so the factor commutes with the other factors and .
- : it is inversion modulo and the identity modulo , giving .
Here has group order , as in the paper. The center of a group distinguishes these four groups of order seventy: its orders are , respectively, so the four groups are pairwise nonisomorphic. Each construction is a semidirect product with elements, so every listed possibility occurs.