Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 103 3 a Solution 2026-10-05
For a standard Young tableau , put , using the Content of a Young-diagram cell. Choose the row-reading tableau , and let be the Coxeter length of the unique permutation sending to . A Gelfand–Tsetlin basis can be chosen so that, when is standard and ,If is not standard, the action is for two consecutive entries in one row, and for two in one column. This is one usual normalization of the Young seminormal form.
Here is a construction and proof of the normalization. Fix , let be the projection onto the tableau line, and defineThe permutation has a reduced expression consisting entirely of admissible swaps, by the reduced adjacent-swap path between linear extensions. At each swap the off-diagonal coefficient is nonzero. In its expansion, the only term that can reach a tableau at distance uses all swaps; omitting a swap gives a shorter path. Thus . This also makes its definition independent of a chosen reduced expression, because itself is fixed.
The relation forces the coefficient of in to be , and forces every other component to lie on the swapped line. If length increases, project the identity onto the line for . The shorter terms of cannot reach in one step, so the coefficient of is exactly one. Applying then gives the reverse coefficient and diagonal coefficient . In the nonstandard cases the same relation gives and the asserted scalar action. This proves the theorem rather than merely specifying pairwise scalings.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 103 6 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
The single-column Young diagram has exactly one standard Young tableau, so has dimension one. Consecutive labels are in one column, and the Young seminormal form gives for every adjacent transposition . These generators determine the representation, and the sign representation sends every one of them to . ConsequentlyAt there are no adjacent generators and both modules are the trivial representation.