Past exam of the groups and representations course of the University of Oxford / 2024 / 1 / a / Solution

A group representation on a vector space $V$ is a group homomorphism $R:G\to \mathrm{GL}(V)$: $R(gh)=R(g)R(h)$ and $R(e)=I$. A reducible representation has a nonzero proper invariant subspace $W\subset V$, meaning $R(g)W\subseteq W$ for every $g$. Over the complex numbers, a finite-dimensional representation of a finite group is a direct sum of irreducible representations, by Maschke's theorem.

The character of a representation is ${\chi }_R(g)=\mathrm{tr}R(g)$. The cyclic property of the trace makes it a class function:Thus a character is specified by one number per conjugacy class, much less information than all the representation matrices. Moreover,Here character orthogonality says that $m_r$ is the multiplicity of the irreducible representation $r$. Consequently characters determine finite-dimensional complex representations up to equivalence of group representations and compute tensor product of group representations decompositions without constructing a new basis explicitly.