Past exam of the introduction to representation theory course of the University of Oxford / 2023 / 2 / c / Solution

Order the conjugacy classes of the symmetric group $S_4$ by representatives $1,(12),(12)(34),(123),(1234)$; their sizes are $1,6,3,8,6$. For a three-dimensional rotation through an angle $\theta$, the eigenvalues are $1,e^{i\theta },e^{-i\theta }$, so the trace of a three-dimensional rotation is $1+2\cos \theta$.

Under the identification with the rotational symmetry group of a cube, elements of order two give half-turns, elements of order three give turns through $\pm 2\pi /3$, and elements of order four give turns through $\pm \pi /2$. A half-turn can have an axis through opposite edges or opposite faces, but both kinds have trace $-1$. ThusIts character inner product with itself isBy character orthogonality, a nonzero complex representation has character inner product one with itself exactly when it is an irreducible representation. Therefore $C$ is an irreducible representation of dimension three.

For comparison useful in part (e), the standard representation of the symmetric group has character equal to the number of fixed letters minus one, namely $(3,1,-1,0,-1)$ in this order. Multiplication by the sign representation changes this character to $(3,-1,-1,0,1)$. Thus $C$ is the tensor product of the standard representation of the symmetric group with the sign representation.