Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2002 iii Paper 2 2 b ii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Conversely, the same induction-norm formula shows that for every nonprincipal . Conjugation by each fixes only , so Brauer's permutation lemma says that it fixes only the identity conjugacy class of . A nonidentity element centralizing would provide another fixed class. Therefore for every .
We first prove that and are coprime. If a prime divided both, a Sylow p-subgroup of would have . The nontrivial normal subgroup meets nontrivially: the class equation for the conjugation action of the p-group on makes the number of fixed elements divisible by , and one of them is the identity. Choose and . Then , contradicting the previous conclusion.
Thus is a normal subgroup that is also a Hall subgroup. The Schur-Zassenhaus theorem supplies a group complement , meaning and . The theorem's existence assertion requires only normality and coprimality of order and index. Here is nontrivial and proper by the assumptions on .
For , suppose . Write with . Projection to gives , hence because is injective. This makes centralize , which is impossible. Hence . Writing an arbitrary element outside as reduces its conjugate intersection to this case. It follows that is a Frobenius complement and is a Frobenius group.
Moreover, for each , the map from into the coset is injective, since , and hence bijective. Thus every element outside belongs to a conjugate of , while no nonidentity element of does. The Frobenius kernel is exactly . This completes both directions of the Frobenius kernel criterion by irreducible induction.