A group of automorphisms of a finite group permutes both its conjugacy classes and its irreducible characters. The two permutation representations have the same character: each automorphism fixes equally many conjugacy classes and irreducible characters. The invertible character table intertwines the two permutation matrices, which have equal traces. The claim concerns fixed classes, not merely fixed elements.
Let be a finite normal closure of the number field . The permutation representation of its Galois group on the embeddings of into has one trivial constituent, because the action is transitive. At a prime, the inertia group invariant basis consists of sums over inertia orbits of embeddings; Frobenius automorphism permutes them in cycles of lengths equal to the residue degrees of the primes of . A cycle of length contributes . Hence the local factors equal those of the Dedekind zeta function, including at ramified primes. If nontrivial irreducible Artin L-functions are holomorphic and nonzero at one, this factorization and the simple pole of the Riemann zeta function show that has a simple pole there.
Degenerate normal modes from permutation symmetry Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
If the mass and stiffness matrices commute with a permutation representation, each symmetry subspace is invariant under the generalized eigenvalue problem for small oscillations. On an irreducible subspace, Schur lemma forces a commuting operator to be scalar, producing a degenerate normal mode multiplet.
Gassmann equivalence Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-07
Subgroups of a finite group are Gassmann equivalent if for every conjugacy class . Equivalently their coset permutation representations have the same character of a representation. They need not be conjugate subgroups. The Sunada theorem turns this equality into equality of Laplacian eigenfunction multiplicities.
Left regular action 2026-10-06
The left regular action of a group on its own underlying set is left multiplication. It is faithful, because an element fixing the identity is itself the identity. For a finite group it gives the permutation representation used in Cayley theorem.
For the standard representation of the symmetric group , the unramified local factor of an Artin L-function, with , is respectively the displayed factor for identity, transposition, and three-cycle Frobenius cycle types. These follow by removing the trivial summand from the three-point permutation representation. If the inertia group contains a three-cycle, its invariant subspace in the standard representation is zero, so the ramified local factor is one.
The character of a finite-dimensional complex representation is ; it is irreducible if the representation is irreducible. The character inner product is
Distinct irreducible characters are orthogonal and each has norm one. For a permutation representation, the diagonal entry of the permutation matrix at a basis vector is one exactly when that vector is fixed. Its trace therefore counts fixed points.
Let be rotation through . Let be reflections in the coordinate axes, and reflections in the two diagonals. The eight values are
Only diagonal reflections fix vertices, two each. Hence
The stated coordinate substitution splits the polynomial basis into two three-cycles:
The identity fixes all six basis vectors; neither nonidentity element fixes any. A permutation representation has character equal to the number of fixed basis vectors, hence
The representation multiplicity of each irreducible character is therefore
An explicit eigenbasis confirms the result. For , put
Then and . Thus each three-cycle carries one copy of every irreducible representation. These signs use precisely the source's substitution action; taking an inverse substitution would interchange and , leaving the total decomposition unchanged.
The specified linear maps form a permutation representation, since
The trace of a permutation matrix counts fixed coordinate basis vectors. On the identity, three-cycles and transpositions, respectively, this gives . Comparing with solution,
For an explicit direct sum,
Both summands are invariant subspaces under coordinate permutations. The first is fixed pointwise and hence gives the trivial representation; the second has character and hence gives . The sign representation has multiplicity zero.
The variables commute, so . Thus has dimension six, with basis , even though nine coefficients occur in the redundant expression in the source. Its representation is the symmetric square of the three-dimensional permutation representation.
The identity fixes all six monomials. A three-cycle fixes none. For a transposition, say , exactly and are fixed; the remaining monomials occur in exchanged pairs. Therefore in the conjugacy class order of solution. The character inner products give multiplicities
Consequently
There is also a concrete decomposition: the span of the three squares is one copy of the permutation representation. The span of the three mixed monomials is another, since are permuted exactly like their omitted indices . Within each, the coefficient-sum-zero vector subspace gives a copy of , and the sum of its three basis monomials gives a trivial representation.
A fixed quadratic polynomial must have equal coefficients on each of the two orbits of monomials. Hence its fixed vector subspace is
The two displayed polynomial invariants are linearly independent and account for both singlets. Equivalently, one may use and as a basis. No constant term belongs to this homogeneous degree-two vector space.
There is one complex irreducible representation for each conjugacy class, hence three. The trivial representation and sign representation are distinct and one-dimensional. The sum of squares of irreducible representation dimensions leaves
Call the remaining irreducible representation . The permutation representation on has character equal to the number of fixed objects, namely on the ordered conjugacy classes . Removing its constant-vector trivial representation gives , whose character inner product with itself is one. This constructs and gives the character table
To obtain every Clebsch-Gordan decomposition of group representations, multiply the characters pointwise. In particular, , and
Thus all ordered pairs of irreducible representations are covered by
Let be a finite normal Riemannian covering, so acts freely by deck isometries. With any lifts of , the heat kernel on a finite isometric quotient satisfies
There is no factor in this kernel formula. Simultaneous invariance of under isometries proves independence of the lifts, by reindexing . Each term solves the lifted heat equation. If is a fundamental domain and a function on , the integral of the right side against over equals
because the translates tile up to sets of measure zero. This converges to as , proving the initial condition. Uniqueness of the heat equation solution on the closed manifold gives the formula. For a noncompact finite cover, use the minimal heat kernels, or compatible Friedrichs heat realizations. The normalized pullback is unitary onto the deck-invariant subspace and preserves the Dirichlet energy, so it intertwines the heat semigroups and yields the same kernel formula. No uniqueness of unrestricted noncompact heat-equation solutions is needed.
Set for an isometry . Diagonal integration and the covering degree give
Unlike the kernel formula, the trace formula has an averaging factor: integration of a quotient function over is times integration over .
Suppose now , with any larger group of isometries of the closed manifold . Change variables and use simultaneous heat-kernel invariance to obtain
Thus is a class function, and the Sunada orbital heat-trace formula can be grouped by conjugacy classes of :
Only classes meeting the finite subgroup contribute, so this class sum is finite even if the larger isometry group is infinite.
For finite , Gassmann equivalence means for every conjugacy class. Summing these counts gives , so the displayed formula gives identical heat traces. Their spectra, with multiplicities, agree: as , the constant limit identifies the multiplicity of zero; after subtracting it, the slowest-decaying exponential identifies the least positive eigenvalue and its multiplicity. Repeating determines every subsequent eigenvalue. This proves the Sunada theorem in the stated covering situation.
There is an important convention when the universal cover has an infinite deck group . For compact quotient manifolds, the subgroups must have finite index; the appropriate generalized Gassmann condition is equality of the characters of the finite coset permutation representations, not equality of possibly infinite cardinalities of conjugacy-class intersections. Let be the intersection of the two subgroup cores. Each core is the kernel of the corresponding finite coset action, so is normal and of finite index in , and . The manifold is then a compact finite normal cover of . The finite group acts on , and have equal coset permutation characters in . For a finite group, the fixed-coset count is
Equality at the identity gives equal subgroup orders, and then equality for all gives almost-conjugacy. Applying the proved finite theorem to establishes isospectrality also in this finite-index interpretation. It avoids taking the divergent heat trace of a noncompact universal cover.
To realize a finitely presented group , begin with the closed smooth four-manifold , whose fundamental group is free on the . Represent the relator words by disjoint smoothly embedded circles; general position permits this in dimension four, including separating self-intersections of representatives. Their oriented normal rank-three bundles are trivial, so perform framed surgeries replacing by . Removing the circles' tubular neighborhoods leaves the fundamental group unchanged, by codimension-three general position. The Seifert-van Kampen theorem shows that each replacement kills exactly the normal closure of its relator. The resulting closed smooth has . This gives a concrete closed-manifold realization of a finitely presented fundamental group. Equip it with any smooth Riemannian metric and lift that metric to the universal and intermediate covers; all covering maps become local isometries.
To ensure nonisometry, one must choose nonconjugate subgroups. If , or they are conjugate, the quotients are isometric for every lifted metric, so Gassmann equivalence alone cannot imply nonisometry. For nonconjugate subgroups, choose the base metric to have no nonidentity local isometry between open sets, using the Sunada local isometry lemma in dimension at least two. If were an isometry, a local inverse of the first covering followed by and the second covering would be a local isometry of , hence the identity. Thus the covering maps satisfy everywhere. Classification of connected covers then forces to be conjugate in , a contradiction. Therefore nonconjugate almost-conjugate subgroups and a locally rigid base metric give isospectral nonisometric quotients.
The character of a permutation representation at equals the number of points fixed by , because a permuted basis vector contributes one to the trace exactly when it is fixed. Thus the character inner product is
To identify the last average, count pairs with . Each orbit contributes , since its number of elements times their common stabilizer size is by the orbit-stabilizer theorem. Therefore
The conjugation in the usual character inner product has no effect here because the permutation characters are real-valued.
For the constant-curvature constructions, the three data sets lead respectively to genera two, three and four. The first two pairs are isometric through a lifted reflection; the third gives nonisometric pairs under the length-identification hypothesis stated below. Nonconjugacy of the two subgroups inside the finite group is not by itself a test for nonisometry.
Replace each , if necessary, by the joint image of its two coset actions, generated by the corresponding pair of generator permutations. The joint kernel lies in both subgroups, so passing to this finite quotient leaves the two coset actions unchanged. We use these faithful joint images in the constructions below.
First verify the Gassmann equivalence needed for the Sunada theorem for all group elements, not just the displayed generators. Write for their permutation matrices. Invertible matrices satisfying
intertwine every word in the generators, hence give equal permutation characters. Here are explicit certificates calculated from the coset actions. Define when column label belongs to the th support below, and zero otherwise. For , labels run from one to twelve; the row supports in their order are
For and , labels run from zero to six, and the row supports are respectively
Direct substitution gives the two intertwining identities, and elimination gives , . These nonzero determinants certify equivalent linear permutation representations. Equal characters imply almost conjugacy: for a subgroup ,
because a fixed coset corresponds to , and each specified conjugate has conjugating elements. The subgroup orders agree since their indices agree, so equality of these characters gives equal intersection counts with every conjugacy class.
Nonconjugacy can also be checked directly: a bijective equivariant sheet relabelling would be determined by the image of one label, since the actions are transitive. Propagating each of the twelve or seven possible images by the two generators gives no consistent bijection in any of the three cases.
For genus two, use . The generator orders are , and their product has order six; on both twelve-sheet coset spaces their cycles are respectively . Map the hyperbolic triangle group onto the joint finite permutation image . Its kernel is torsion-free because these orders are exact, giving a smooth normal cover of the sphere orbifold with cone orders . The subgroups act freely by the smoothness criterion from cone-monodromy cycles, since all coset cycles have their full orders. The two quotient surfaces therefore have
Their equal permutation characters give isospectrality by the Sunada theorem.
There is nevertheless an isometry. The sheet relabelling
fixes labels three and five and satisfies
To see the geometric significance, write the triangle-group generators as , , where reflect in triangle sides. Conjugation by sends both to their inverses. The two displayed permutation identities say exactly that reflecting the triangles and relabelling the sheets preserves their gluings. This reflection intertwining of triangle-cover coset actions lifts the base reflection to an orientation-reversing isometry of the quotient surfaces. Thus the genus-two pair from these hyperbolic triangles is isometric, despite the subgroups being nonconjugate in the orientation-preserving finite group.
For genus three, use . Both generators and their product act in seven-cycles, so the same construction with gives smooth seven-sheet quotients and
Their isospectrality follows from the certificate . The relabelling , namely with label two fixed, again satisfies and . Therefore this constant-curvature genus-three pair is also isometric by the same lifted triangle reflection. This assertion concerns the constructed triangle metrics, rather than arbitrary metrics placed independently on the two topological surfaces.
For genus four, use and a different base: a hyperbolic torus with one cone point of order seven. Its orbifold fundamental group has presentation
Map to . Multiplying the given permutations shows that their commutator is a seven-cycle in both coset actions, so this map has torsion-free kernel and both subgroup quotients are smooth. The base orbifold Euler characteristic is , giving
The certificate and the Sunada theorem give an isospectral pair for each base metric. This is the cone-torus construction of genus-four Sunada surfaces.
For nonisometry, choose simple closed base geodesics representing , avoiding the cone point and meeting once. We use the following additional geometric hypothesis, as permitted in this question: choose a cone-torus metric such that, in each cover, the length identifies its unique degree-four lift, and the length identifies precisely its two degree-three lifts, among all primitive closed geodesics. This is a generic length-separation choice; it excludes coincidences with other geodesic lengths. No claim about an arbitrary symmetric choice of base metric is needed.
A lift component of a base geodesic corresponds to a cycle of its monodromy permutation. The degree-four cycle is on the sheets and on the sheets. The degree-three cycles are on the first cover and on the second. Since the base curves meet once, their lifted geometric intersection numbers are the sizes of the intersections of these sheet-label sets. The cycle intersections count intersections of lifted curves therefore gives the two unordered multisets
Negative curvature ensures that the geodesic representatives realize geometric intersection number. An isometry would preserve the length-identified degree-four lift and the set of the two length-identified degree-three lifts, even if it exchanged the latter, so it would preserve this unordered multiset. The multisets differ. The intersection test for nonisometric finite covers thus proves the genus-four pair is nonisometric for this choice of constant-curvature metric. Without a condition excluding relevant accidental length coincidences, subgroup nonconjugacy alone would not establish that conclusion.
The permutation representation has basis , , with . Its matrix is a permutation matrix, whose diagonal entry is one exactly at fixed points. Therefore
The conjugacy classes are specified by cycle type, with sizes for . The trivial and sign representations give the first two rows. The permutation representation on four letters contains a trivial line; its orthogonal complement has character equal to the number of fixed letters minus one. Tensoring that representation by the sign gives another row. Finally the quotient supplies the two-dimensional standard representation. The resulting table is
With the class-size-weighted inner product, these characters have norm one and are pairwise orthogonal, so all are irreducible and inequivalent. Their squared dimensions sum to , proving completeness.
The permutation representation on the complex vector space with basis has permutation character . The multiplicity of the trivial character is . Count pairs with : each orbit contributes , by the orbit-stabilizer theorem. Hence this multiplicity equals the number of orbits.
For a transitive action the average number of fixed points is one. The identity fixes points, so not every other element can fix at least one; otherwise the average would exceed one. Thus there is a derangement with .
If , evaluating at that derangement gives . Character values are algebraic integers, since a finite-order representation matrix has roots of unity as eigenvalues, and the sum of algebraic integers is integral. A rational algebraic integer is an integer. Therefore is an integer, forcing .
The diagonal action on is . Its permutation character is , since both coordinates must be fixed. The orbit-count result and the real-valued character give
If any and another nontrivial constituent occurs, this is at least . If just one nontrivial constituent occurs, the previous result forces its multiplicity to one. Thus implies every multiplicity is one, and the formula then gives .
Subgroups of a finite group have Gassmann equivalence when
Summing over the conjugacy classes gives . Equivalently, their coset permutation representations have the same character of a representation. In particular, almost conjugate subgroups need not be conjugate.
Put , , and . Begin with the sphere punctured at three points. Its fundamental group is , and the epimorphism sending to defines a connected regular -sheeted covering space. Around the punctures the monodromies have cycles of lengths . Fill each lifted puncture by a disk, using the local branched covering models , and . This produces a closed oriented surface , with acting by homeomorphisms that are smooth in these local models. This construction works even if one of is one.
Triangulate the base sphere with the three marked points as vertices and two faces. Lifting this triangulation gives
so the Euler characteristic is
In the hyperbolic case , this is equivalently the triangle cover construction for Sunada surfaces. Take the hyperbolic triangle group
and its epimorphism with the same images. All finite-order elements of are conjugate to powers of its three elliptic generators. Because their images have the same exact orders, is torsion-free and . It can be assembled from hyperbolic triangles of angles . Both examples below belong to this hyperbolic case.
For and to be smooth surfaces normally covered by , the subgroup actions must be free. The precise condition is that neither subgroup meet any conjugate in of a nonidentity power of , or . These are exactly the possible point stabilizers. Then and are regular coverings, with deck transformation groups respectively. No normality of in is needed: normality would concern the further covering of the base orbifold, not these coverings from . For a free subgroup ,
Choose any -invariant smooth Riemannian metric on , for example by averaging an arbitrary metric. It descends to both quotients. On functions let be the unitary action of , and let for . The averaging operator projects orthogonally onto the -invariant functions, which identify with functions on . The trace formula underlying the Sunada theorem is
The expression is a class function, because commutes with . Thus Gassmann equivalence makes the two sums identical. Alternatively, apply the same averaging formula to each finite-dimensional Laplacian eigenspace: its invariant dimension is . This proves equality of every eigenvalue multiplicity and hence isospectrality of the two quotient metrics.
If for some , the action of gives an isometry between the quotients for every such metric. Nonconjugacy is therefore necessary. To make it sufficient, choose the quotient orbifold metric generically so that its regular locus has no nonidentity local isometries; this is the equivariant, or orbifold, version of the Sunada local isometry lemma. Smooth perturbations on regular coordinate balls provide this genericity while their lifts remain smooth on . Any isometry between and , when composed locally with their projections, would then identify the same points of the base regular locus. By continuation it is an isomorphism of their coverings of that locus, and the classification of connected covering spaces forces to be conjugate in . Thus nonconjugate subgroups give non-isometric isospectral quotients for a suitable generic invariant metric. The genericity belongs to the base regular locus; the covering metric on itself necessarily has the prescribed deck symmetries.
For genus two, an explicit choice is the following permutation group on twelve labels, with permutation products composed from right to left:
These parameters are those in Kang's genus-two construction. They admit a direct finite verification. Starting with and iterating , the successive sizes are , after which the set is unchanged. Thus , and direct multiplication gives and . The conjugacy-class triples , obtained as , are
This proves Gassmann equivalence. The subgroup fixes the labels , whereas has no common fixed label, so they cannot be conjugate even in the full symmetric group. Both are groups of order eight, so they meet no nonidentity order-three element. The only order-two power of is
which is central in and lies in neither subgroup. This also excludes its conjugates and proves freeness. The quotient Euler characteristics and genera are therefore
The covering surface has genus nine.
For genus three, use , of order . Let stabilize a nonzero vector and let stabilize a two-dimensional subspace. Both have index seven and order twenty-four. An element fixes nonzero vectors. Hyperplanes correspond to nonzero dual vectors over , so the number fixed in the dual action is , the same number. Equality of these permutation characters proves that the point and hyperplane stabilizers are almost conjugate.
They are not conjugate. In coordinates where fixes , its elements include all matrices with arbitrary row and . An invariant plane containing would project to a line invariant under every , which is impossible. A plane not containing would be the graph of a linear functional on the quotient, and arbitrary would move that graph. Thus stabilizes no plane, whereas every conjugate of does.
Choose the concrete generators
Over , each of has order seven. The same closure iteration has sizes , verifying that generate . Since seven does not divide , neither stabilizer contains a nonidentity power of these generators, or any conjugate of such a power. We may therefore use in the triangle cover construction for Sunada surfaces. The quotient calculation is
Here the covering surface has genus forty-nine. Choosing the generic invariant metrics described above completes both requested pairs.
Realize the two-dimensional irreducible representation as the standard representation of the symmetric group on
with permuting coordinates. It is the complement of the trivial summand in the three-point permutation representation. For each prime the local factor of an Artin L-function is
where is the inertia group and Frobenius means any lift of the residue-field Frobenius automorphism. On the lift is independent of that choice. At an unramified prime, put . The Local Artin factors of the standard representation of S3 are
The polynomial discriminant of is , so only can ramify in its splitting field. For , the squarefree factorization of modulo determines the Frobenius cycle type on its roots.
At ,
The quadratic is irreducible, so Frobenius is a transposition and
Thus , and . At ,
The quadratic discriminant is , a nonsquare, so this is again a transposition. Consequently and .
At , the possible cubes are , so has no root modulo . Being cubic, it is irreducible; Frobenius is a three-cycle. Therefore
and .
The ramified factor at must be computed on inertia group invariants. Write and set . Using gives
The Eisenstein polynomial over has degree six, so is a totally ramified degree-six subfield of . The latter has degree at most , so the fields agree. This Eisenstein sextic presentation of the splitting field of X3 minus 3 over Q3 shows . Since the only permutation-invariant vectors in have all coordinates equal, their intersection with is zero. Thus
In particular ; an unramified degree-two factor at would give the wrong coefficients.
Finally the Euler product makes its Dirichlet series coefficients multiplicative for coprime indices. Its constant coefficient is , and , . Every integer up to ten is now covered, giving
The permutation representation on sends the basis vector to . Its character is , because precisely the fixed basis vectors contribute to the trace. Burnside lemma says that the number of orbits is . To prove it, double-count with : the count is . Each orbit contributes by the orbit-stabilizer theorem.
A pair is fixed under the diagonal action exactly when both entries are fixed. Since permutation characters are real,
by Burnside lemma on the product.
The general linear group acts on the lines of . It is doubly transitive: choosing nonzero representatives of any two distinct lines gives a basis, and a linear map can send that basis to representatives of any other ordered pair. Thus there are two orbits on ordered pairs, the diagonal and its complement. The character inner product of this permutation character with itself is two, while the multiplicity of the trivial character is one by transitivity. The sum of squares of irreducible multiplicities is therefore two; the remaining summand is one irreducible representation, of dimension . Its dimension is .
For acting on two-element subsets, an ordered pair of subsets is classified by intersection size . All three occur for , and a permutation carries any pair of a given type to any other. Hence . The natural point permutation representation is the trivial representation plus the standard representation of the symmetric group, of dimension : its irreducibility also follows from double transitivity and inner product two.
Embed this point representation into by . The map is equivariant, and its kernel consists of vectors with for every distinct . Three distinct indices force every , so it is injective for . Thus the trivial and standard representations each occur in . The norm three leaves exactly one further irreducible, with multiplicity one. It is the orthogonal complement of that embedded subspace, equivalently the vectors satisfying for every . Its dimension is
The constituent dimensions are , each once. For , complementation identifies two-element subsets with points, so there are only the trivial and 2-dimensional standard constituents.