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16 votes
1 answer
804 views

Existence of a faithful irreducible representation using Möbius function

Let $G$ be a finite group, $L(G)$ its subgroup lattice and $\mu$ the Möbius function. Consider the Euler totient of $G$ defined as follows: $$ \varphi(G) = \sum_{H \le G}\mu(H,G) |H| $$ Let $X=\{M_1, \...
32 votes
3 answers
3k views

Order of products of elements in symmetric groups

Let $n \in \mathbb{N}$. Is it true that for any $a, b, c \in \mathbb{N}$ satisfying $1 < a, b, c \leq n-2$ the symmetric group ${\rm S}_n$ has elements of order $a$ and $b$ whose product has order $...
54 votes
4 answers
5k views

How many square roots can a non-identity element in a group have?

Let $G$ be a finite group. Let $r_2\colon G \to \mathbb{N}$ be the square-root counting function, assigning to each $g\in G$ the number of $x\in G$ with $x^2=g$. Perhaps surprisingly, $r_2$ does not ...
1 vote
0 answers
72 views

Scalars by which symmetrizations of cyclic permutations act on Specht modules

Let $S_n$ be the symmetric group. Pick $a \in 2,\ldots,n$ and denote by $c_a \in \mathbb{C}[S_n]$ the symmetrization of the element $(12\ldots a)$ i.e. $c_a$ is the sum of cycles of type $a$. Let $\...
3 votes
0 answers
210 views

How many conjugacy classes of elementary abelian subgroups of order $p^2$ does $\operatorname{GL}_{4}(\Bbb Z / p\Bbb Z)$ have?

$\DeclareMathOperator\Hom{Hom}\DeclareMathOperator\GL{GL}\DeclareMathOperator\Aut{Aut}$Let $f\in \Hom((\Bbb Z/p\Bbb Z)^2,\GL_{4}(\Bbb Z / p\Bbb Z))$ be an injective homomorphism. What is the number of ...
8 votes
0 answers
247 views

Computing the number of elementary abelian p-subgroups of rank 2 in $GL_{n}(\mathbb{F}_{p})$

Let $p$ be a prime number, and let $\mathbb{F}_{p}$ be a finite field of order $p$. Let $GL_{n}(\mathbb{F}_{p})$ denote the general linear group and $U_{n}$ denote the unitriangular group of $n\times ...
9 votes
1 answer
650 views

A stronger version of a problem of Kenneth Brown using representations

Let $G$ be a finite group and $\mathcal{L}(G)$ its subgroup lattice. Let $\mu$ be the Möbius function on $\mathcal{L}(G)$. The reduced Euler characteristic of the order complex of the coset poset $\{ ...
6 votes
0 answers
1k views

Frobenius formula

I know two formulas by the name of Frobenius. The first one computes the number $$\mathcal{N}(G;C_1,\dotsc,C_k):=|\{(c_1,\dotsc,c_k)\in C_1 \times \cdots \times C_k\:|\:c_1\cdots c_k=1\}|,$$ where $...
28 votes
1 answer
1k views

Number of irreducible representations of a finite group over a field of characteristic 0

Let $G$ be a finite group and $K$ a field with $\mathbb{Q} \subseteq K \subseteq \mathbb{C}$. For $K=\mathbb{C}$ the number of irreducible representations of $KG$ is equal to the number of conjugacy ...
14 votes
3 answers
660 views

Which partitions realise group algebras of finite groups?

Fix an algebraically closed field $K$ (maybe of characteristic zero first for simplicity, like $\mathbb{C}$). Given a partition $p=[a_1,...,a_m]$ of an integer $n$. We can identify $p$ with the ...
6 votes
0 answers
88 views

Numbers where there is a unique group with integral character table

Call a number $n$ special in case there is a unique group of order n whose character table consists of only integers. This should be equivalent to the condition that the number of conjugacy classes ...
0 votes
1 answer
283 views

Is any abelian subgroup of a semidirect product isomorphic to a direct product of abelian subgroups? [closed]

Let $H$ and $K$ be groups and $V$ an abelian subgroup of the semidirect product $\ H\rtimes K$. Do there exist abelian subgroups $H^{\prime }\leq H$ \ and $K^{\prime }\leq K$ \ such that $V\cong H^{\...
16 votes
1 answer
1k views

Tensor power of the natural representation of Sn

The symmetric group $S_n$ acts over $V=\mathbb{R}^n$ by permuting the canonical basis. So it acts over $V^{\otimes p}$ with a diagonal action (acts the same over each element of the tensor product). ...
13 votes
2 answers
1k views

Number of commuting pairs (triples, n-tuples) in GL_n(F_q) (and other groups)?

Question 1 What is the number of pairs of commuting elements in GL_n(F_q) ? I am aware of many results concerning commuting elements in Mat_n(F_q), but I am interested in GL i.e. non-degenerate ...
20 votes
1 answer
586 views

$q$-(and other)-analogs for counting index-$n$ subgroups in terms of Homs to $S_n$?

The following formula of astonishing beauty and power (imho): $$ \sum_{n \ge 0} \frac{| \mathrm{Hom}(G,S_n) | }{n! } z^n = \exp\left( \sum_{n \ge 1} \frac{|\text{Index}~n~\text{subgroups of}~ G|}nz^...
8 votes
2 answers
576 views

Two statistics on the permutation group

Let $\mathfrak{S}_n$ be the permutation group on an $n$-element set. For each fixed $k\in\mathbb{N}$, consider the two sets $$A_n(k)=\{\sigma\in\mathfrak{S}_n\vert\,\, \text{$\exists i,\,\, 1\leq i\...
6 votes
1 answer
341 views

Sum of Young symmetrisers of a given shape

Preliminaries and notation: Let $n\in \mathbb{Z}_{>0}$ and $\lambda=(\lambda_1,\lambda_2,\dots,\lambda_s)\vdash n$ be a partition. Given a Young diagram of shape $\lambda$, we can associate it ...
3 votes
0 answers
215 views

scalar multiple of Young symmetrizer

The following is a lemma from Fulton and Harris' book -Representation theory,a first course (page 53): Lemma: For all $x\in \mathbb{C}\mathfrak{S}_r$, $c_{\lambda}\cdot x\cdot c_{\lambda}= scalar \;...
10 votes
2 answers
2k views

Number of faithful representations of a finite group

Is it known how many faithful linear representations a finite group G has on a complex vector space of given dimension? What if G is abelian? I would even be interested in this special case: the ...
5 votes
1 answer
264 views

Group not leaving subset invariant

Let $Y,X$ be two sets of size n,m. Let $Y\subset X$. What is the maximal group(in size) $G< Sym(X)$ such that gY=Y imply that $g=1$? Here I mean that the only permutation which permutes elements of ...