Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 103 4 ii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
We use the core-quotient bijection for partitions: an ordered -tuple and a fixed -core determine a unique partition of an integer, withThe irreducible characters in both and therefore correspond to the same ordered tuples of total size . Replacing the empty core of a partition by while keeping the quotient of a partition fixed gives a bijection from to . In particular .
For such a pair, all levels of the core tower of a partition above level zero agree. At level zero, their sizes are and , respectively. Put . When , the base-p digit sum satisfiesThe P-adic valuation of a symmetric-group character degree from the core tower then givesThus the same bijection preserves degree coprimality to and restricts to a bijection between the indicated sets of irreducible characters of degree coprime to p. ConsequentlyFor , take to be the empty partition; the construction becomes the identity.