For a finite group, the regular representation contains copies of each irreducible representation . Its character of a representation is at the identity and zero elsewhere. Thus , including the trivial representation. This formula converts independent uniform expectations into constrained configuration counts.
The Fourier transform on a finite group convention has the displayed inversion formula. The sum is over one representative from each equivalence class of unitary irreducible representations. It follows from the Schur orthogonality relations and the regular representation decomposition, and holds at every group element without a limiting argument.
Group shift operator 2026-10-05
For a finite abelian group , defines the regular representation on the basis labelled by . The linear characters give the common eigenbasis
Character orthogonality proves orthonormality, and changing variables by the translation in a group proves the eigenvalue formula.
First realize the free isometric action. Choose generators of the finitely presented group . In every dimension , the connected sum
has fundamental group the free group . Map its generators onto the and take the connected regular covering corresponding to the kernel. Its deck transformation group is . Lift any Riemannian metric on to . Deck transformations are then Riemannian isometries, and a deck transformation fixing one point is the identity by uniqueness of lifts. This gives the free isometric realization of a finitely generated group. For the trivial group use . If is infinite the covering manifold need not be compact, which is allowed in this first construction. Simple connectivity of is not being asserted here.
The requested nonhomeomorphism conclusion needs an extra hypothesis. For a counterexample even with distinct subgroups, take , and . They are conjugate and therefore Gassman equivalent. For every free isometric action of , the conjugating element induces a Riemannian isometry . These quotients cannot be nonhomeomorphic. Identical subgroups give an even simpler obstruction. Thus the stated equivalence condition alone cannot imply the claimed topology.
A sufficient version is: for a finite with Gassmann equivalent, nonisomorphic subgroups , there are closed isospectral manifolds with fundamental groups , and hence they are not homeomorphic. To prove it, realize as the fundamental group of a closed smooth manifold of dimension four. Here is the needed closed-manifold realization of a finitely presented fundamental group. Start with a four-dimensional zero-handle and one one-handle for each generator. Attach two-handles along disjoint embedded boundary circles representing the relators, with arbitrary framings. The boundary is three-dimensional, so finitely many such loops can be chosen disjoint. The resulting compact handle manifold has by the Seifert-van Kampen theorem.
The inclusion is surjective on fundamental groups: relative to the boundary the dual handle decomposition uses only handles of indices two, three and four, none of which introduces a fundamental-group generator. Double along its boundary. In the amalgamated product for the double, both boundary maps are the same surjection onto , so the two copies of are identified completely and . The double is closed, connected and smooth after smoothing its collar. This construction works in any dimension at least four; it does not claim that every finitely presented group is a closed three-manifold group.
Let now be the universal cover of with the lifted metric. Since is finite, is compact and simply connected, with a free isometric deck action of . By Sunada theorem, are isospectral. Because is their universal cover, . Nonisomorphic fundamental groups rule out a homeomorphism. For an infinite the same qualified argument applies to finite-index subgroups with equal coset characters: divide first by the intersection of their finite-index subgroup cores, producing a compact intermediate cover and a finite isometry group to which Sunada applies.
For explicit nonhomeomorphic examples, let be an odd prime. Let , and let be the Heisenberg group over a prime field, whose elements are triples with multiplication
Both have order , and every nonidentity element has order . For , induction gives
so the assertion follows at , since is odd. But is abelian and is not: and do not commute.
Embed both groups regularly in . Every nonidentity element in either regular representation has cycle type . Hence both embedded subgroups meet the identity class once, the class of that cycle type times, and all other classes zero times. They are nonisomorphic Gassmann equivalent regular subgroups. Taking and using the closed four-manifold construction with gives an explicit pair of isospectral nonhomeomorphic quotients, completing the intended construction under a sufficient hypothesis.
Finally choose distinct odd primes and take
Conjugacy classes in a direct product are products of classes, so their intersection counts factor. Thus all subgroups are Gassmann equivalent. They are pairwise nonisomorphic: the unique Sylow -subgroup of is its th factor, and whether it is abelian records . Realize as the fundamental group of a closed four-manifold and quotient its universal cover by these subgroups. The binary family of nonhomeomorphic Sunada quotients gives
This existence statement is valid; the earlier universal nonhomeomorphism assertion from Gassmann equivalence alone is not.
A standard Young tableau has its entries increasing from left to right in each row and from top to bottom in each column. For the convention , use column-reading order of standard Young tableaux: read columns from left to right, each from top to bottom, and compare the resulting words lexicographically. This makes the requested product direction explicit. The order and the symmetrizer multiplication convention must be chosen together.
We prove the vanishing claim. Suppose the rows of and the columns of have no collision. The argument in Question 1 shows that every column of contains one entry from each eligible row of . Its first column thus selects one entry from every row. Each selected entry is at least the first entry of that row in . Sorting the selected entries, as the standard tableau does, gives a column componentwise at least the first column of : increasing individual entries cannot decrease any order statistic. If the columns are equal, equality of their sums forces every selected entry to be that row's first entry. Delete this common column and repeat. At the first differing column, its first differing entry in is therefore larger; otherwise . Thus absence of a collision implies in column-reading order of standard Young tableaux.
If , there must instead be a transposition in . It fixes and negates , giving . Hence
This is triangular vanishing of Young-symmetrizer products; it does not assert vanishing in the opposite order.
Normalize to . List all standard tableaux in increasing shape dictionary order on integer partitions, and within each shape in increasing column-reading order of standard Young tableaux. Then for , using Question 1 between different shapes and the result above within a shape. The left ideals have an internal direct sum: if with , multiply on the right by to get , since and every later . Repeat with . This proves directness without incorrectly treating all the idempotents as mutually orthogonal.
Let count the standard tableaux of shape and let . In the regular representation a simple module of dimension occurs times, by the Artin–Wedderburn theorem. The direct sum just constructed contains copies of , so for every shape. We supply the needed counting identity independently of the dimension conclusion.
The Robinson–Schensted correspondence bijects permutations with pairs of standard tableaux of the same shape. Here is its row insertion construction and inverse. Insert the successive permutation entries into an increasing row by replacing its first entry larger than the incoming entry, bumping that replaced entry into the next row; if no entry is larger, append at the row end. Continue until a new cell is created. Record the insertion time in that cell of a second tableau. For completeness, the successive bumped entries strictly increase, and their column indices weakly decrease: an entry below a bumped entry was originally larger, so the next replacement occurs no farther right. The entry newly placed in each row is smaller than the entry removed and larger than the entry above it. At a strictly earlier column, that last inequality follows from row increase in the preceding row; at the same column, it follows from the preceding bump. Hence the insertion tableau keeps increasing rows and columns. If a new cell is appended below the first row, the preceding bump guarantees that the row above reaches that column, so the shape stays a Young diagram. Recording times also increase in rows and columns, since every new cell is an outer corner of the current diagram. Thus both tableaux are standard at the end. Conversely, remove the cell with the largest recording label. Reverse its bumping path upward, replacing in each preceding row the rightmost entry smaller than the moving entry and moving the displaced entry upward. This recovers the last inserted letter; iterating recovers the entire permutation. The two rules undo one another at each row. Thus
Semisimplicity also gives . Since termwise, equality of these sums forces for every shape. The internal direct sum has dimension and hence fills :
There is also a useful numerical form. Right multiplication by is an idempotent with image . In the permutation basis of , each diagonal coefficient is the coefficient of in , namely . Its trace equals its rank, so . Together with the count just obtained this recovers the hook-length formula.
Put , and let . Sharp two-transitivity gives and . A nonidentity element fixes at most one point. Counting the nonidentity elements in the stabilizer subgroups shows that there are fixed-point-free elements. Let be this set together with the identity. We first prove it is a normal subgroup, rather than presuming that fixed-point-free elements are closed under multiplication.
For , and directly. Otherwise use complex characters of a finite group. Let be the permutation character and , the character of the permutation representation with its constant line removed. For every nontrivial irreducible character of , form the virtual character
Its values are at the identity and at every fixed-point-free element. At an element with one fixed point, conjugate it to ; induction gives , because there is exactly one fixed coset.
The identity and the fixed-point-free elements together contribute to the inner product. The remaining elements are partitioned into the nonidentity parts of the stabilizer subgroups. Hence character orthogonality gives
A virtual character of norm one is plus or minus an irreducible character: its coefficients in the irreducible-character basis are integers whose squares sum to one. Its positive degree selects the plus sign. Thus each is an actual irreducible character.
For a group representation, holds exactly on its kernel: make the representation unitary and compare the sum of its unit-modulus eigenvalues with its dimension. All of therefore lies in the intersection of the kernels of the . Conversely, a nonidentity element fixing a point gives in . Some nontrivial irreducible character of has , since otherwise the regular representation of would not vanish at . Consequently
This proves normality and subgroup closure. It has order and no nonidentity element fixing a point, so it is a regular permutation subgroup.
Now acts transitively by conjugation on : identify an element of with its image of and use transitivity of on the remaining points. Thus all nonidentity elements of have the same order. Taking a suitable power of one element shows this common order is a prime . By Cauchy's theorem no other prime divides , so is a -group. Its nontrivial center is -invariant, so transitivity forces the center to be all of . Therefore is elementary abelian of order .
Since is prime to , is the unique Sylow -subgroup of . Uniqueness makes it characteristic under every group automorphism. We have proved
The character argument supplies the regular kernel of a finite sharply two-transitive group; the final Sylow argument establishes the stronger characteristic assertion.
Use the following normalization for Fourier analysis on a finite group. Choose one unitary irreducible representation from each equivalence class, including the trivial representation. For a scalar function , put
This convention uses , rather than , in the Fourier transform on a finite group; it makes the normalized convolution on a finite group preserve multiplication order.
The needed representation theory consists of Maschke's theorem and unitarization of a finite-group representation, together with the Schur orthogonality relations:
The regular representation contains copies of each , so . Thus the scaled matrix coefficients , and also their complex conjugates, form an orthonormal basis of all scalar functions on . These facts imply Fourier inversion on a finite group and the Parseval identity on a finite group in the forms
and hence
In particular, the transform is an isomorphism onto the direct sum of the matrix algebras , with the displayed weighted Hilbert-Schmidt inner product.
Define the normalized convolution on a finite group by
Substituting and using the group representation identity yields the convolution theorem on a finite group
Unlike normalized convolution on a finite group on an abelian group, this product need not commute. If , then . For left translation of a group function and right translation of a group function and ,
For an abelian group, every irreducible representation is one-dimensional; this reduces to Fourier analysis on a finite abelian group with characters relabelled by their inverses. These formulas establish the basic scalar theory, with all normalizations and multiplication orders fixed.
Now suppose every nontrivial irreducible representation has . If is a mean-zero function, its component at the trivial representation is zero. The Parseval identity on a finite group gives, for each other ,
Using the convolution theorem on a finite group, the Hilbert-Schmidt norm inequality , and the Parseval identity on a finite group once more gives the product mixing in a quasirandom group estimate
Write for the subset density values of , respectively, and let , be balanced subset indicators. Since both are mean-zero functions, . Their squared norms are and . Also , so the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality yields
If , the final bound is strictly smaller than . Thus the normalized number of pairs with is positive. Equivalently,
This is the desired conclusion for a quasirandom group; the strict inequality ensures positivity rather than merely a nonnegative lower bound.
Use , the necessary parameter range for the bounds involving . The construction comes from the singular value decomposition of matrix Fourier blocks. For each inequivalent unitary irreducible representation of dimension , consider the Hilbert space with the Hilbert-Schmidt inner product and the operator
Its operator norm is at most one, since is a unitary matrix and . Thus all its singular values lie in .
Two identities control their weighted moments:
Here the expectation in is uniform on the solutions of the constraint, and the trace on used to compute each moment is the ordinary operator trace. We justify the identities explicitly to fix their normalizations and the noncommutative order.
The adjoint operator is , so
For rectangular matrices, the operator has trace , as is seen on the matrix-unit basis. Squaring the previous operator therefore gives
The required representation theory consists of unitarization of a finite-group representation, the Schur orthogonality relations, and the regular representation decomposition. The last gives the character expansion of the identity delta
Summing the two operator traces with weights selects in the first, and in the second. Multiplication by converts each independent-variable expectation to its conditional expectation. This proves . In particular is real and nonnegative, despite the apparently complex summands in its original formula. Since , the nonvacuous hypothesis has .
Select every singular value satisfying . Index the selected pairs by , set , , and choose unit right singular vectors and unit left singular vectors with . Define
Both are matrices, proving (i). Repeated group representations in this list are literally the same chosen representative, rather than different equivalent realizations.
Use the Young–Jucys–Murphy elements in the group algebra . Their joint spectrum is
Equivalently one can use the regular representation, which contains every irreducible representation. The commuting elements are self-adjoint in a unitary representation, so there is a simultaneous eigenbasis.
A standard Young tableau has entries increasing along each row and down each column. If entry occupies cell , its Content of a Young-diagram cell is . Define the set of content vectors of standard Young tableaux by
The shape here is a partition of an integer; it is not itself the vector of eigenvalues. For both sets consist of .
Fix and . Write when a single addable node of a Young diagram turns into . For each positive part , let be the partition of an integer obtained by decreasing that part by one, sorting, and omitting zeros. The Vershik linear relations are
Equal row lengths must be counted separately on the right. Equivalently, if is the number of rows whose decrement produces , the right side is . There is no multiplicity coefficient on the left because irreducible restriction branching rule for a symmetric group is simple.
To prove the relations, restrict the Young permutation module to the subgroup fixing . The tabloids split into orbits of a group action according to which labeled row contains . Removing that entry gives, for row , the Young permutation module with composition , which is isomorphic to the one for its sorted partition. Hence
Its multiplicity is the right side. On the other hand decompose into irreducible representations first and apply the restriction branching rule for a symmetric group to each summand. Its multiplicity is then the left side. Equality proves the relation.
For example restricts to , so the coefficient is two rather than one. For , the regular representation, the relation reduces to . These checks emphasize why counting distinct resulting partitions without their row multiplicities would give a false recurrence.