Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2026 iii Paper 111 4 d Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
At , the diagonal entries of are , while every off-diagonal entry isHence is exactly the Coxeter Gram matrix , and part c givesFor a Finite Coxeter group the Gram matrix is positive definite, and for a Hyperbolic Coxeter group it is nondegenerate with Lorentzian signature. In either case , so is not an eigenvalue of and the Coxeter element fixes no nonzero vector.
For an Affine Coxeter group, the Gram form has a nonzero radical. If , then for every , and every generating reflection satisfiesTheir product therefore fixes . Thus every affine Coxeter element has a nonzero fixed vector.