Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2005 iii Paper 2 1 a iii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Use the exterior-power Lie algebra representation:Reorder wedge factors when necessary and interpret repeated factors as zero. The explicit weight basis of the exterior square of Sym4 for sl2 isfor , andfor . Their weights are and , respectively.
Direct application of the displayed operators gives and the lowering chainsThe raising coefficients along the first chain are ; along the second, and . Thus each span is stable and is the required irreducible module. At the common weights , the and vectors are independent; the other weight spaces occur only in the first span. This proves that the ten vectors are a basis of and that the two spans are complementary. The highest-weight vectors are