Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 ia Paper 3 8D Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-06
The Möbius group consists of all Möbius transformations of the Riemann sphere , with operation function composition. A nonzero-determinant matrix represents the map . If , its pole maps to and maps to ; if , the map is affine and fixes . Nonzero scalar multiples of represent the same transformation.
Define by this action for . Substitution of fractional-linear expressions shows , so is a group homomorphism. Any invertible matrix can be rescaled into the special linear group: choose with , which is possible because every nonzero complex number has a square root. This does not change the transformation, proving surjectivity. A transformation represented by is the identity only if fixing , and forces and . The determinant-one condition then gives . ThusFor the fixed-point claim, a nonidentity Möbius transformation has at least one fixed point of a Möbius transformation: when the finite fixed points solve a quadratic, and when infinity is fixed. A quadratic shows there can be no more than two distinct fixed points unless the transformation is the identity. Suppose there is exactly one. Conjugate it to infinity by a Möbius transformation. The resulting map has form , since it fixes infinity. If it also has the finite fixed point , a contradiction. Hence it is with . Its th power is , never the identity for . Conjugation preserves order, so a nonidentity finite-order Möbius transformation has exactly two fixed points.
Now let be a finite abelian subgroup of the Möbius group. First suppose it contains an element of order greater than two. Conjugate the two fixed points of to and , so , with a root of unity of order greater than two. Every element commuting with permutes its fixed-point set, because . A Möbius transformation preserving each of is ; one exchanging them is . In the second case and , so commuting would force , impossible. Thus all elements of are scalings. A finite subgroup of a field multiplicative group is cyclic; here one can see this directly by choosing the least common multiple of all element orders and observing that the scalars lie among the th roots of unity, a cyclic group. Hence is cyclic.
Otherwise every nonidentity element of has order two. If is nontrivial, choose and conjugate it to . The action of on has image of order at most two. Its kernel consists of scalings , and the order-two condition forces , so the kernel has at most two elements. Hence . Orders one and two give cyclic groups; order four with all nonidentity elements involutions gives , generated by any two distinct nonidentity elements. Both possibilities occur: scalings by roots of unity give every finite cyclic group, and gives the Klein four group. The classification is
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 ii Paper 3 17G b Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-05
Conjugation by partitions into orbits. Each non-singleton orbit has size divisible by , by the orbit-stabilizer theorem. The singleton orbits are exactly . Since is divisible by , . This set contains , so .
For the deduction we also give the representation-theoretic ingredient behind Burnside's theorem: a nonabelian finite simple group has no nontrivial conjugacy class of prime power size. Here is a proof, so no stronger theorem is being assumed without justification. Suppose has class size . For an irreducible character of degree coprime to , the class sum acts as the scalar , which is an algebraic integer: the class sum has an integer-entry matrix in the regular representation, which contains every irreducible representation, so this scalar is an eigenvalue of an integer-entry matrix. Also is an algebraic integer. Bezout's identity then makes an algebraic integer. All its algebraic conjugates have modulus at most , because character values of a representation are sums of roots of unity. An algebraic integer with this property is zero or a root of unity: the monic polynomials of all its powers have uniformly bounded integer coefficients, so two powers must coincide unless it is zero.
Every nontrivial irreducible representation of a simple group is faithful. If were a root of unity, equality in the triangle inequality would force its representing matrix to be scalar, hence central, impossible. Thus whenever , except for the trivial character of a representation. Orthogonality of the identity column and the column in the character table now givesThis would make an algebraic integer, contradicting the fact that rational algebraic integers are integers. The same proof covers class size directly through triviality of the center.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 ii Paper 4 17I b Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-05
A cyclotomic field over is a field generated by an th root of unity of exact order . It contains all roots of , and is its splitting field. In characteristic zero this polynomial is separable, so the extension is Galois.
Every automorphism sends to with , and is determined by that image. Composition multiplies the exponents modulo , yielding an injective homomorphism into an abelian group. Thus the Galois group is abelian. Using irreducibility of the cyclotomic polynomial, every unit exponent occurs andIf “cyclotomic” is used more broadly for a subfield of such a field, it is still Galois and abelian, because every subgroup of an abelian Galois group is normal.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 137 2 i Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
Write and , where is the character group of a finite abelian group. The Fundamental theorem of finitely generated abelian groups writes the finite group as a product of cyclic groups. A character of a cyclic group factor of order is determined by an arbitrary th root of unity, so . This description also shows that the characters separate points: if , a nonzero coordinate of is detected by a character with .
Multiplication by permutes , soFor this forces . For every summand is one. Since , the character-sum cancellation lemma givesAll character values are roots of unity, so inversion here is also complex conjugation. This is the finite-abelian version of character orthogonality.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 ia Paper 1 7B c Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-29
Over , triangularize and denote its eigenvalues, with algebraic multiplicity, by . ThenThe numbers are all the root of unity solutions of , soConsequentlyIf is an eigenvalue of , choose with . The displayed identity makes at least one factor zero. Thus is an eigenvalue of and
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 iii Paper 324 1 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
The distinct values in one period imply that is the least positive period, , and . Write , where and . Use the positive-exponent quantum Fourier transform convention already used in the concept article. The amplitude of first-register value isBy the root-of-unity filter, the inner sum vanishes unless . DefineThe distinct give an orthonormal basis of the second register, and the transformed state isReindexing modulo showsConsequently measurement in this common eigenbasis returns each with probability ; the corresponding eigenvalue of is a uniformly sampled th root of unity. A single measured phase reveals the denominator , which need not be . Repeated samples permit exact period recovery from a Fourier sample, for example by taking the least common multiple of their reduced denominators. The simultaneous eigenspaces and their probabilities depend on , not on the particular labels .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 ii Paper 3 23F Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
Let be the universal covering map. Since the complex plane is a simply connected domain, the lifting criterion for a covering space gives a holomorphic lift between one-dimensional complex tori such thatFor every , the difference belongs to the discrete period lattice . It depends continuously on , so it is constant. Differentiating shows that the derivative is -periodic. It is bounded on the compact closure of a fundamental parallelogram, and periodicity makes it bounded on all of . The Liouville theorem therefore makes constant, and henceThus every holomorphic map has an affine lift of a holomorphic map between one-dimensional complex tori. If “map of complex tori” means an identity-preserving map, choose ; then , so is the required linear map. Without that convention the statement must say affine, since a nonzero translation in a group of the torus lifts to .
The Weierstrass elliptic function of isThe subtracted term gives the Normal convergence of the Weierstrass elliptic-function series away from . PutThe Laurent coefficients of the Weierstrass elliptic function at zero giveSet and . Direct substitution shows that the principal part and constant term ofvanish at zero. Since is an elliptic function, translation gives the same cancellation at every point of the period lattice. Every apparent isolated singularity is therefore a removable singularity, so is an entire function. It is periodic and hence bounded on the translates of a compact fundamental parallelogram. The Liouville theorem gives , which proves the Weierstrass elliptic differential equation
Finally suppose that is a biholomorphic group homomorphism. Its identity-preserving lift has the form by the first part. Since the inverse map also lifts linearly,Choose a -basis of . Multiplication by is then represented by a unimodular matrix . As a real-linear transformation of , it has determinant ; hence and . The characteristic polynomial of and the Cayley-Hamilton theorem giveThis already has the required form with and . Moreover , so forces . Thus is a root of unity, of order , , , , or , completing the description of an automorphism of a one-dimensional complex torus.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2020 ii Paper 4 20G Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-29
First suppose for every complex embedding. The coefficients of the monic polynomialare rational algebraic integers and hence integers. They are uniformly bounded in , because each is an elementary symmetric sum of numbers of modulus one. Only finitely many such integer polynomials can occur, so only finitely many algebraic integers occur. Two powers coincide; since , this gives . Thus is a root of unity. This is Kronecker theorem on algebraic integers in the unit disk.
The second printed assertion is literally false for . For the intended statement with , use the Minkowski embedding: algebraic integers of form a lattice, so only finitely many have all conjugates of modulus at most . A nonzero algebraic integer with every conjugate of modulus at most one hasso every conjugate has modulus one and the first part applies. Consequently every non-root in that finite box has . Choose no larger than the least of these finitely many maxima, taking if there are no non-roots. Then every nonzero satisfying for all is a root of unity.
Dirichlet unit theorem states that for signature ,and the logarithmic embedding of number field units maps the free part to a full lattice in the hyperplane where the weighted coordinate sum is zero.
For a real quadratic field, the roots of unity are and the logarithms of positive units form a nonzero discrete subgroup . Its smallest positive element is for a unit . Given any positive unit , choose so that ; minimality forces the quotient to be . Applying signs and inverses shows
Since , the ring of integers of a quadratic field is . A unit satisfies the Pell equation . The elementhas norm . To prove it is the smallest unit above one without invoking the continued-fraction algorithm, suppose . Replacing by its inverse or negative if needed makes , and the conjugate relation implies , so . For , the numbers are respectivelyOnly the last list contains a square, namely , which yields the endpoint itself. Hence no smaller unit exists and
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2022 ia Paper 1 1B b i Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
The relation makes a root of unity, so and normalization gives . Write the binary expansion . Then , and henceup to the convention for ordering the binary digits. This explicit tensor product of one-qubit states proves that is a product state.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2025 ii Paper 1 19J c Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
The quotient adds the relation . All four one-dimensional characters factor through some such quotient: choose even when acts as . A two-dimensional representation from part (b) factors through exactly when . Hence the irreducible representations that never arise from a finite dihedral quotient are precisely the two-dimensional ones for which is not a root of unity.
A nonabelian simple group has no nonidentity conjugacy class of prime-power size. Coprime-degree irreducible characters vanish on such an element: the conjugacy-class sum makes the character-to-degree ratio an algebraic integer, and the Kronecker theorem on algebraic integers in the unit disk makes a nonzero ratio a root of unity, forcing a scalar in a faithful group representation. Column character orthogonality then makes an algebraic integer, impossible. This is the character-theoretic ingredient in Burnside's theorem.
If a finite extension of the P-adic numbers contains a primitive th root of unity , the identity gives . The ratios of these factors reduce to the nonzero integers in the residue field. Thus an extension with has only roots of unity of order prime to .