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Tuesday, 5 February 2013

Permutation groups: Burnsides Lemma and the Fixed point free theorem

Definition If G acts on Ω and gG then the fixed point set fix(g) is {αΩ|αg=α}. If fix(g)={} then g is FPF (fixed point free).

Lemma ("Burnsides lemma" except it was actually proved by Frobenius) If G acts on Ω then the number of orbits is 1|G|gG|fix(g)|.

proof: Consider the set S={(α,g)Ω×G|αg=α}. We shall count it in two different ways:
First given α, consider the number of ways it can occur as the first component of the pair: that's just |Gα| the size of its stabilizer, from the fact |Gαg|=|Ggα|=|Gα| proved in the previous post we get that the contribution to S from the orbit is αG is |Gα||αG|=|G| therefore |S|=|G|number of orbits.
Secondly given g, consider the number of ways it can occur as the second component of the pair: that's just fix(g).
Putting these together gives the formula.

Corollary If G acts transitively on Ω (and |Ω|>1) some element of g is fixed point free. proof: There is only 1 orbit, so the average number (over G) of elements fixed is 1.. but the identity has |G| fixed points - every element!

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