Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 2 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2018 / Paper 2 / 10 / a

A vector subspace $W\subseteq {\mathbb{C}}^n$ is an invariant subspace for the group representation $D$ ifBecause $g^{-1}$ is also in the group and $D(g)$ is invertible, the inclusion is equivalently $D(g)W=W$ for every $g$.

For $n>0$, the representation is an irreducible representation when its only invariant vector subspaces areThus no nonzero proper subspace is preserved by all representing matrices.