Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2009 iii Paper 2 5 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Let have dimension over , with a nondegenerate alternating bilinear form . The symplectic group isIt acts freely and transitively on ordered symplectic bases. Choose the first vector in ways, then choose with in ways. Their span is nondegenerate, so choose the remaining symplectic basis in its orthogonal complement. This gives the recurrenceand therefore
For the permutation module with even, put andIt is invariant under coordinate permutations and has codimension one. The dot product restricted to is alternating because . Since the ambient dot product is nondegenerate, . Evenness of ensures , soHere the word symplectic must be understood as an alternating form before quotienting: a form with a nonzero radical is degenerate. The nondegenerate symplectic form is induced on , of dimension .
Now put . Coordinate permutations preserve the induced form and give a homomorphism . To see it is faithful for , suppose a permutation acts trivially on . For every pair of distinct indices,The two weight-two vectors could differ by only if the complement of a two-element set also had size two. For that is impossible. Thus preserves every two-element set, and hence fixes every index: intersect two such sets with one common element. ThereforeFor , both groups have order , and the injection is onto. This provesThe lower bound matters: for the action on the quotient has the Klein four-group as group homomorphism kernel. The construction is the deleted permutation module in characteristic two.