Lecture 8
Problem 47. Verify that Theorem 8.7 holds for the examples shown in class ().
Solution:
-
(a)
: The character table reads
1 1 1 1 -1 1 , 2 -1 The conjugacy classes have sizes as follows : 1, : 3, : 2. The norms of the columns are computed:
and the inner products between different columns are easily seen to be zero:
We now compute the norms of the rows (with the weights given by the size of each conjugacy class):
Row orthogonality is also easily shown:
-
(b)
. Let . The character table then reads
1 2 3 4 1 1 1 1 1 We observe that the first row and the first column are identical, and both are of unit length:
The remaining rows and columns are identical (up to permutation), thus they also all have norm one:
The inner product of these rows/columns with the first row/column is zero, since
It remains to show row/column orthogonality. Firstly, the inner product of one of the “non-trivial” rows/columns with the first row/column gives
For the inner product of two distinct non-trivial rows/columns the relevant sum is of the form (for some )
-
(c)
The character table of reads:
size: 1 1 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 Thus the norm of the any of the first four rows equals
and the norm of the final row is
Similarly, the norm of the first two columns equals
whereas the norm of any of the last four columns equals
The inner product of the first two columns equals
the inner product of one of the first two columns with any of the last three is
and the inner product of any two distinct columns out of the last three is
The inner product of the last row with any of the first four equals
and the inner product of the first row with any of rows two to four equals
Finally, the inner product of two distinct rows from two to four equals
Problem 48. Compute the character tables of the following groups (You shouldn’t need to use Theorem 8.7 for this):
-
(a)
-
(b)
-
(c)
-
(d)
-
(e)
(You will need to find the conjugacy classes and irreducible representations for each of these groups. See the exercises from previous lectures! )
Solution:
-
(a)
This is an Abelian group, so every element is its own conjugacy class. The irreducible representations are all one-dimensional. Let . Then each irreducible representation is of the form , where . The table character table then reads
5 6 7 8 1 1 1 1 -
(b)
Also an Abelian group, with nine conjugacy classes. The irreducible representations factor as a product of two irreducible representations of , i.e. they are given as , where , where . The character table reads
1 1 1 1 -
(c)
We have a complete classification of the irreducible representations from Lecture 4. The conjugacy classes are given in Problem 5 Prerequisites: there are two one-dimensional representations and to irreducible two-dimensional representations. Filling in the table gives
size: 1 2 2 5 1 1 1 1 0 -
(d)
The conjugacy classes were computed in Problem 3 Prerequisites, and the irreducible representations in Problem 22 1. Putting these together gives the character table:
size: 1 1 2 2 2 -1 1 1 1 1 1 Funny observation: this is the “same” as the table of !
-
(e)
We combine the result of Problem 5 Prerequisites with the classification of irreducible representations from Lecture 4. It will be convenient to split into two cases:
Even :
size: 1 1 2 2 2
Odd :
size: 1 2 2 2
Problem 49. Write the character table of a group as a matrix . Use Theorem 8.7 to show that
Solution: Consider the matrix
By Theorem 8.7, the matrix is unitary, i.e.
hence
Consider the matrix , whose entries are those of the character table. We now note that
hence